


Solidarity

by anactoria



Series: Solidarity [1]
Category: Watchmen (2009)
Genre: Angst, Dystopia, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Minor Adrian Veidt/Original Male Character, Minor Laurie Juspeczyk/Original Male Character, Original Character(s), Past Dan Dreiberg/Laurie Juspeczyk - Freeform, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-05
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 12:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/356969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1992, and this isn't Utopia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally posted to LJ and FFN in 2009, and is based in the movie universe. There are implications of dubiously consensual sexual activity (not between Adrian and Dan) taking place 'offscreen'; please be advised.  
> Thanks to muse_of_graphia for beta-reading chapters 3-14.

February 1992

It's become routine. Dan checks in at least twice a day -- more if he has time in between tinkering with Archie, collecting rations, watching the street-level entrance and whatever else needs to be done -- just sticks his head round the comms. room door, tuning out the radio babble ( _...rumours of thirteen more arrests in Manhattan, and further disappearances. Noted journalist Susan Wells, former senators for New York, Wisconsin..._ ) a mute question and not much hope in his eyes.

It's Maria this morning. Not that it really matters; whoever's on duty, the look's the same. The small, sad smile, the sympathetic headshake. 

"You have engine oil on your nose." She's trying to soften it. She understands. They all do. They've all got someone, some voice or name they're hoping against hope to hear, someone they can't quite give up on. These days, though, Dan's hopes ebb a little lower every morning.

He should stop asking, really. It's two months since he last heard Laurie's voice, six months since he saw her, and communications from Europe get sparser every week. But he can't quit. Not yet. Even if they're not lovers anymore, she's his last link to the life before. He has to believe she's alive out there, somewhere.

None of them could have predicted this. Not even Veidt; he's pretty sure this isn't the kind of brave new world Adrian had in mind. Dan doesn't even think about what happened much, these days -- it's surprisingly easy not to dwell on the past when every day could be the last one you spend free -- but when he does it's without anger. He doesn't have time. There's just quiet weariness now, and regret.

The door bursts open. "Dan! Can you come give me a hand, please? We've just had ten arrive from New York, I haven't got a fucking clue how I'm gonna find room for all of them, and I can't find Judith _any_ where -- "

Dan nods at the harassed young man in the doorway. "Sure, Serk. Just give me a minute to get cleaned up."

"Apparently one of them's some hot-shot politician from the old administration. You ought to have a word with him, see if he can help us. Connections. Something. Fuck. Where _is_ everyone today?"

Dan heaves a sigh. "O _kay_ , okay, I'm coming."

So Dan still has engine oil on his nose, he's still sweaty and scruffy and cleaning his glasses on the edge of his t-shirt, when he rounds the corner into the loading bay and sees him. Surrounded by a gaggle of people already, turning to Dan with a gracious smile, like it's 1985 again and they're old friends.

Dan just jams his glasses back on and stares. 

" _Adrian_?"

 

_ December 1985 _

_The Christmas tree's_ huge _, and the lights are a little gaudy for his or Laurie's taste but, well... Sally insisted. It takes pride of place in their front room, since they don't have a TV these days. Couldn't switch the damn thing on without running across Nixon talking about foreign co-operation, or Adrian holding forth about how we need to take this opportunity to rebuild a better, more unified society, or some crappy comedian on some crappy satirical panel show making a crack about Rorschach nutjobs._

_They're joking about it. Already. Dan can't quite fathom how quickly the mood's changed, how eagerly people have forgotten their shellshock and moved on to buoyant optimism. Call him crazy, but it just seems wrong._

_"Daniel, honey..." Sally wiggles her empty Martini glass at him with a wink._

_Laurie's in the kitchen, leaning back against the counter. She smiles at him, a little tiredly, but there's real contentment in her eyes. She's always loved Christmas, she told him, ever since she was a little girl. Sally was never ungenerous with presents, and she'd even make a special effort not to fight with Larry, at least not where Laurie could hear them. It was one of the few times she got to play at being normal._

_"You ok?" she asks him. "Hope my mom isn't being too much of a pain in the ass..."_

_Dan forces a smile. "Nah. I'm good," he says. And he tries to be. He mixes Sally another Martini, gets himself a beer from the fridge, and does his best to hope._

 

February 1992

"Do keep your voice down, Daniel. They'll all want one." 

Adrian's clothes are travel-rumpled, there are shadows under his eyes, and he probably hasn't showered or shaved in a day or two, but somehow he still looks unruffled. He's still beautiful. Still holds himself like royalty, still stands out like he's got his own personal spotlight, halo-blond in the dingy loading bay. People still turn their heads to look at him.

After all of this, after everything he's brought about, he's still beautiful. 

Mostly that makes Dan want to hit him. But at the same time he feels his insides knot up, tight and painful, because in all of this something from the life before -- something is the same.

"What are you doing here?" he asks Adrian, instead of punching him.

"The same thing as everyone else, it would appear. 'Liberal sympathisers' aren't exactly popular in government these days, Dan," Adrian half-smiles, "As I would have expected you to be well aware." The tone is _almost_ teasing, _almost_ a challenge, only none of it reaches Adrian's eyes. 

That's when Dan realises that, maybe, he isn't the same. For all the way he stands out like a painted angel in the basement gloom, a light has gone out of him.

"You _know_ each other?" Serk is looking at them with eyebrows raised, incredulous and not a little impressed.

Dan hesitates before answering and then, when he realises Adrian isn't going to cut in and take over the conversation, replies, "Yeah. You could say that," in a voice that, he hopes, implies that's it, end of story, no further questions. "Look, Judith'll be back before long, she can deal with these guys. I've got other things to do." It's not a lie. He's always got things to do.

Adrian nods polite agreement. "Since I'm here, perhaps I can make myself useful. Is there anything I can do to help?"

Serk jumps at the offer like an excited puppy. "Sure! I mean yeah, yes, of course. This way..."

Dan scrubs at his eyes, suddenly exhausted. They'll be calling him 'sir' next.

He manages to avoid Adrian, and his own whirling thoughts, pretty successfully by holing up in the workshop and stripping Archie's engines, double- and then triple-checking for minor faults that might not even have existed in the first place, then volunteering to monitor the comms. room at night. It's gone midnight by the time he's done with Archie, and pretty much everyone else has turned in. He's yawning, so he lets himself into the makeshift kitchen, hoping there'll at least be an inch or two of foul-tasting instant coffee left in the pot.

There isn't. There is, however, Adrian, sitting at the table with heavy-lidded eyes and fingers pressed to his temples.

"Dan," he says, pleasantly enough, without looking up. His tone is neutral; open.

Dan's not in the mood for a conversation, not right now. His brain hasn't exactly processed Adrian _being_ here yet. 

"Do you have somewhere to sleep?" he asks.

As avoidances go, it's not exactly subtle, but Adrian accepts it gracefully. "I'm afraid not. It appears you have more strays than spaces at the moment."

Clearly he's going for 'cheerfully resigned,' but he doesn't quite manage to disguise the fatigue in his voice, or the way his eyes are half-closed as though against a blinding headache.

Dan's fishing in his pocket for his keys even as he sighs. "Here."

Adrian blinks.

"I've got my own room. Well, more of a cupboard really, but it's one of the perks of being a permanent fixture." He tries for a grin. "I'm on radio duty 'til four. You can crash out there. It's down the hall, next to the showers. Third left."

For a moment he thinks Adrian's about to argue, but then he just takes the keys and nods, gratefully, before leaving Dan alone in the empty kitchen.

Dan's halfway to the comms. room when he realises he's forgotten his glasses. He was never a huge reader, before -- he prefers technical stuff, things that fit together neatly -- but when he's up in the dead hours it's comforting. He reads whatever he can get his hands on: crappy novels, the few newspapers that are left in print, or the small stack of contraband he's got under his bunk. _Under the Hood_ , of course, a couple of bird books from his childhood, and a thin, stapled-together pamphlet, made up of photocopied pages from the long-defunct _New Frontiersman_. 

And tonight, he definitely needs a distraction. He's passing the kitchen on his way back when a small, stupid impulse seizes him. He resists for an instant -- it's late, and there's no reason he should even care, not about _Adrian Veidt_ , of all people -- but curiosity gets the better of him.

The door's ajar, and Dan's rescuing his glasses from the windowsill when Adrian walks in, towelling his hair dry and wrapped in a bathrobe. Dan's bathrobe. And Dan immediately feels as though Adrian owns the place and he's the intruder.

Regretting it already, he nods at the cup of coffee cooling beside the bunk. "Probably won't keep you awake. I figure you don't usually drink instant, but..."

"I'm learning to appreciate small luxuries, believe me," Adrian says dryly, his lips quirking without amusement. He looks at Dan for a second longer, as though he is about to speak again, but doesn't.

Then, as Dan's turning to leave, he hears his name again. Spoken slowly, as though it is a word Adrian has not used in a long time. He stops.

"Thank you." This time, the smile Adrian offers him is brief, gracious, and perhaps the most genuine Dan has ever seen.

Maybe that figures. It's easy being honest when you've got nothing left to lose.


	2. Chapter 2

_ March 1986 _

_The nights are drawing out and Adrian, as usual, is at the centre of a crowd. All of them are young and promising, most brilliant, several beautiful and not shy about making it clear they're interested in more than his conversation. Adrian is polite, pleasant, even attentive, to all of them. He answers their bright-eyed questions with wit and a practised warmth that makes each feel he or she has been really_ listened _to -- even if the words barely register, even if half Adrian's attention is swallowed by the list of names that runs endlessly through his head like a catechism, by the memory of killing cold._

_He is freezing from the inside out. Sometimes he is sure that he will wake one morning unable to open his eyes, solid and immobile as marble. It does not matter. He never cracks._

_There is a small flurry of movement to his left. Someone is moving through the room towards him. Adrian recognises the face -- Gregory Dyson, a rising star in the current administration and as irritating and rodent-faced a social climber as one could possibly hope to avoid meeting -- a split-second too late, and then Dyson has installed himself in front of Adrian and is shaking his hand with unseemly enthusiasm. Adrian just looks at him until he lets go._

_Dyson gets to the point quickly enough, then. Nixon's popularity is still dropping, it seems, and all his grand words about new worlds, new starts and solidarity cannot stem its decline. At a time like this, popular perception is that the country needs -- stronger leadership. But with the right support... if the right public figures come out in his defence..._

_Adrian declines with impeccable but iron-clad courtesy. Dyson will understand, of course, the importance of his public neutrality. Image is such a large part of Adrian's currency. Becoming entangled in party politics would be, shall we say... impolitic._

_The wry smile with which Adrian accompanies the statement is a full stop. Cowed, Dyson nods and retreats._

_However._

_Adrian's train of thought does not. After all, he has considered politics before now. He'd have little difficulty making his way into government; that much has always been obvious. And while wealth and connections allow him to wield a considerable degree of influence, it's behind-the-scenes, oblique. Perhaps a more direct approach would be more honest._

_Honesty. Even the thought is bitter._

_All of Adrian's patience dissipates at once. Abruptly, he sets down his champagne glass. It is two-thirds full._

_"You're not leaving already?" exclaims the Hollywood starlet who has appeared at his elbow, shaking her head sadly. "That's the trouble with you big-shot business types. Always thinking about the next day's work."_

_"I'm afraid so," Adrian replies, with precisely the appropriate measures of regret and firmness. "There is, as they say, no rest for the wicked."_

_He is not thinking about tomorrow. He is thinking about November 2nd, 1985, about shattered glass and snow, and about the betrayed look in Daniel Dreiberg's eyes.  
_

February 1992

According to the digital clock on Dan's windowsill, it is seven twenty-two. Indolent, by Adrian's standards. Force of habit wakes him before six most days, and he prefers to spend as little time as possible lying alone with his thoughts. 

There are eight minutes remaining before curfew lifts; it is not yet safe to raise the blackout blind. The half-light seeping through beneath it is murky and grey.

Adrian's eyes adjust quickly to the darkness, and so he narrowly avoids treading on Dan's face as he climbs out of bed. Dan has obviously managed to find a spare pillow and blanket and is snoring softly on the floor, still wearing his glasses, with a small torch beside him and a heavy hardback -- _Birds of Continental Europe (An Illustrated Guide)_ \-- open, spine-up, on his chest. A thoughtless habit, and one that has irritated Adrian since he was old enough to know what a book was, but it's in keeping with the childishness of reading under the covers, with the fifteen years Dan's face seems to have shed in sleep. Moving very quietly, Adrian removes Dan's glasses, closes the book, and places both neatly on the windowsill.

The kitchen, which also appears to function as social space and impromptu meeting-room, is already occupied by a small circle of people, the tone of their conversation low and urgent. He recognises more than one face among them from the previous afternoon. Judith, the unofficial leader, is a freckled and good-humoured young woman little more than thirty, who nonetheless carries an air of stolid capability with her at all times like a shield. At this moment, however, the expression on her face is harried. It's one Adrian has seen frequently during the past few days, usually on members of the resistance -- if one can call it that, this network of disparate, scrabbling groups so unlike the organized movement bleated of fearfully by newscasters on Party-sanctioned TV channels.

"They got Martin," Judith is saying, "And we've no other way of getting medical supplies at the moment. We're running low. People are staying here longer, it's harder and harder to get them to the border and more dangerous when we do. What we have won't last long." 

"I may be able to assist," Adrian says, without prelude, nodding by way of greeting. The urgent hum drops almost to silence the second he opens his mouth. Well, some things never change.

"What do you suggest?" Judith asks, eyeing him with surprise.

"I'm assuming you hold local information. Details of city hospitals, pharmacies. Names of senior staff. That sort of thing."

"Pharmacies have to be Party-licensed, just like in New York, but we've got hospital records. Maria?"

Ten minutes later, Adrian is scanning through a sheaf of papers. Five minutes after that, his eyes have seized upon the name that he needs, and he nods.

Yamada Terumi. A talented researcher, with a brilliant career ahead of her, until she discovered that the pharmaceutical company she worked for was preventing affordable, generic versions of its latest and most effective anti-malaria drug from being produced in Africa. Coincidentally, she resigned her position five days before Veidt Industries withdrew funding for all joint ventures, leading indirectly to the company's collapse. They've exchanged pleasantries in the intervening years, and she's likely to be sympathetic. She's also now head of immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

There is a Patrol van -- white, unassuming, and equipped with state-of-the-art surveillance technology, some of it originally developed by the research arm of Veidt Industries -- parked metres from the hospital's main entrance. A black-clad officer is planted on each side of the doorway. _They_ stand out as baldly as concrete bollards, solid and entirely unlike shadows.

Their presence does not trouble Adrian overmuch. He is not officially being hunted, not yet, and the Patrols still hesitate to arrest respectable civilians in public, in broad daylight. It is the other, more shadowy branches of the police that do that work; the ones that operate after dark. 

Adrian's expensive suit and air of cool assurance see him through the corridors unmolested, and then he is standing in a spacious, glass-fronted office. A discreet surveillance camera watches from one corner of the ceiling.

"Dr. Yamada."

"Adrian." She is visibly aged, harassed and wearied, but she looks at him with real warmth. "Terumi, please. Follow me."

She brings them to a deserted operating theatre where the overhead lights cast harsh, angled shadows.

"We shouldn't be overheard here. Apparently the Party still trusts us not to plot its downfall over the open chest cavities of our patients. For now." Her expression turns wry. "I get a couple of the unofficial radio stations. Heard you'd vanished. I'm assuming this isn't a social call."

"You were always perceptive. However," Adrian allows his voice to soften, "I do hope you're keeping well. How are you and Valerie?"

Terumi's smile dissolves. "Who?"

The tone is carefully indifferent, but the message clear, and it's one Terumi can't risk saying aloud, even away from cameras and listening devices. _They got her._

"I'm sorry," Adrian says, placing a hand gently on her shoulder. And he is, but there's elation there, too, because in that moment it is clear that she will help them. For that, he feels only the tiniest flicker of guilt.

 

_ November 1988 _

_Dan still doesn't watch much TV, but he scans the front pages when he gets the chance. It's the usual stuff today: summits with the EC and Russia, crime stats drop for the third consecutive year... Senate elections._

_He knows he shouldn't be surprised when he sees Adrian's grinning face plastered under that headline, but his chest clenches all the same. He's not masochistic enough to read the accompanying spiel, though -- and anyway, he already knows what it's going to say. Meteoric rise. Immense popularity. Is there nothing this man can't do? Etcetera, etcetera, etfuckingcetera._

_Turning away in disgust, Dan decides to forget about the paper for today. He buys a plastic bag of jawbreakers instead. Funny, how that kind of retro candy's so popular again. It's a nostalgia thing, which is kind of ironic when you can't turn a corner without being preached at about the bright new future we're all meant to be looking forward to. People ought to be buying Flying Saucers or something, maybe those freeze-dried strawberries they sell in silver packets labelled as astronaut food._

_Laurie's still out when he gets home. He tosses the plastic bag down on the kitchen counter, and that's when he notices the tiny purple 'V' logo in the bottom right hand corner._

_Even_ candy _. There's no escape._

 _Okay, so Adrian probably isn't exactly involved with the company these days, what with helping run the world and all, but_ God _. Dan knows it's childish, petty, stupid -- all the things, in fact, that Adrian's so good at making people feel -- but he flings the bag of sweets across the room, away from him, with sudden and searing violence. They scatter across the kitchen floor with a sound like heavy rain._

 

February 1992

When Adrian returns to the officially disused building half-seriously referred to as 'HQ', Dan is nowhere to be seen. He understands that he is being avoided, again, but has no time to dwell on the subject, because then Judith unceremoniously ropes him into helping mend a central heating pipe on the first floor.

"What did you do, before this?" he asks, to avoid silence as they work.

"I was a teacher. High school chemistry. And a damned good one too, if I say so myself." Judith looks round with light in her eyes. "It's great, you know? Showing kids they can be good at something they thought was boring as hell. Seeing them realise their potential."

Adrian nods. "The government still employs teachers of basic science. You didn't have to stop, or join the resistance. What changed?"

She turns back to the pipe. "My dad. Died in '85. And when Steele started using that as an excuse -- giving himself extra powers, getting rid of people whose politics he didn't like -- well, I couldn't just sit around. I had to do something."

"I'm sorry to hear that." Adrian's found himself saying that rather frequently today.

"Don't be. He was an asshole." Judith's voice slows, turns ruminative. "But still, he wouldn't have wanted this. You know?"

He knows.

By the time he next sees Dan, it is late. Adrian has been allocated a spare bunk, and he's sure Dan has no task to wait up for, but somehow when he wanders into the kitchen shortly after midnight Dan is still sitting at the table, a cooled mug of coffee half-full in front of him. It appears neither of them is doing much sleeping these days.

So they talk. Awkwardly, at first, and then a little less awkwardly, with the occasionally half-joke or sidelong smile. Trivialities, skirting the edges of the real questions. It's obvious Dan has no wish to discuss Karnak, or the intervening events, at this moment, and Adrian does not object. The unfaded memory is with him always, like pressure on a bruise.

"I can't help noticing you're alone here, Dan," he ventures, though, after a while. "If you don't mind my asking, where is Laurel?"

Dan's gaze drops to the table, and Adrian's heart sinks.

"In Paris, with her mom, last thing I heard. Europe was still safe then. She got out six months ago." He glances back up, directly at Adrian, but there is no rancour in the look. It's simply sad. "I haven't heard from her in two."

This time, Adrian doesn't say sorry. To do so would be pathetically, cheaply inadequate.

The knowledge he burdened them all with was awful, but he'd assumed that Dan and Laurie would share it, that they'd comfort each other. He was to be the only one to bear it alone.


	3. Chapter 3

_ December 1989 _

_Dennis Steele's reputation precedes him. He has come out of nowhere, and he's going to bring them all together, he insists, unite the parties, the nation -- hell, the whole planet -- against the Dr. Manhattan threat. Weed out the undesirable elements, build a stronger world._

_He talks about unity and Utopia, the rhetoric cutting close enough to home that Adrian cannot quite manage to smile at it. He also maintains that Manhattan must have had collaborators, might still have supporters running around in the States now. Adrian wonders if he has any idea how close he is to the truth -- or how far from it._

_Steele is a big man with a firm handshake, a genial manner, a cigar and a glass of whiskey always to hand. His persona is, Adrian has to admit, a pitch-perfect piece of spin. It glosses the extremeness of his proposals, placing him as a man of the people, a grizzled, no-nonsense father-figure offering politically incorrect, salt-of-the-earth advice from behind his whiskey glass. It makes him seem_ real _._

_But something else glints behind it, flint-hard and familiar. Adrian spots it a mile away, some vestige of reptilian instinct in this recognition of one monster by another. Perhaps even an equal._

_He offers Steele a cordial smile and a murmured greeting. They loathe each other on sight._

_It is some months after this -- and after the election in which Steele sweeps to victory in a landslide the like of which has not been seen in living memory -- that Adrian arrives precisely on time for a meeting with the Defense Secretary only to be told that he is, regrettably, running unavoidably late._

_The PA is apologetic, deferential, even a little star-struck at his presence, and runs to fetch coffee, but Adrian is quietly seething. It has been years, perhaps decades, since he has been kept waiting, and the sense of powerlessness it induces is unfamiliar and entirely unpleasant._

_When he hears Steele's voice booming forth from under the office door, he recognises it instantly. His fingers tighten around his coffee cup until the knuckles turn white._

 

March 1992

Three weeks after he arrives, Adrian finds an apartment a couple of streets away from HQ, and moves in with the few possessions he's rescued from New York. Usually, people get out, on to the next safe house and over the Canadian border, as fast as they can, but Adrian doesn't seem in much of a hurry to escape. 

Which is funny, Dan thinks, considering he bothered to flee this far, but then when did he ever understand Adrian's motives, anyway?

Despite that, something's... well, almost started to thaw out between them. Dan reasons that, at a time like this, if the smartest guy on the planet turns up at your door you don't exactly tell him to go fuck himself, however much you'd like to, so they may as well try to get on. But in all honesty, he's glad. It's kind of nice to have someone around who'll listen to him muse over Archie's inner workings with real intellectual curiosity instead of polite resignation, and who knows to leave well enough alone when he lapses into silence for a minute too long. 

And Adrian's here pretty much every day anyway, volunteering for whatever needs to be done, often staying 'til after curfew and crashing out on a spare bunk, or just sitting up at the kitchen table with Dan until morning, never stopping to rest unless he's forced to. Which is probably normal for someone like Adrian -- you don't get _that_ rich and successful without a workaholic streak, which is also why Dan has no childhood memories of his dad that take place before 9pm -- but when he pauses even for five minutes there's a taut, urgent restlessness in the movements of his hands and the way he glances round desperately for something to do. 

It doesn't take Dan long to figure that, while that might partly be about doing everything he can to help out, at least half of it's Adrian avoiding whatever it is that's inside his head. 

Of course, he always shows up looking immaculate, even in the dark, utilitarian workwear that suits the kind of activities they carry out, and he's charmed every single one of Dan's compatriots, male and female, into wide-eyed admiration in a matter of days. Just like his old self, except for tiny little things, things that maybe no-one but Dan notices. Like the fact he pauses a beat longer before speaking now, or the way that sometimes, in quiet moments before dawn hatches monstrously out, he almost, almost looks his age. 

Little things that stop Dan putting a boot in Adrian's face, or just walking out of the room, and keep him sitting up in the small hours instead, drinking coffee when he should be sleeping.

They're even working together now, discussing plans or heading out on errands. Like this evening. It's routine stuff -- a batch of black-market ration coupons that might just be legit enough to keep them all fed for a week or two -- but the source may not be trustworthy, and there's safety in numbers. They pick up without incident, but he's glad of Adrian's presence anyway when he's suddenly stopped from turning into the gloomy alley that disguises HQ's entrance by a hand on his chest. 

Adrian glances pointedly across the road. 

The white van parked there is unfamiliar. It's not a Patrol van, but Dan's pretty sure he saw it earlier. Passing them slowly -- _too_ slowly, now he thinks about it -- as they rounded the corner on the way out. Hot and abrupt, adrenaline slashes through him.

"What do you think?" Dan asks. "Gangs?"

"Most likely. Semi-sanctioned by the Party, and they know that attacking _us_ won't get them arrested."

" _Shit_." There's valuable equipment in there, not to mention stolen data and contact details for other resistance groups along the line. The organised gangs won't be above selling them out to the secret police given the opportunity; it's lucrative, and helps keep them unmolested.

"Quite." Adrian's lips are pressed together in irritation, but he's calculating already. Dan can practically see the cogs whirring behind his eyes. "Unless there's another vehicle concealed somewhere nearby, there won't be more than four of them. You should take this entrance. I'm faster; I'll make it around the back more quickly."

Dan nods, and then Adrian's vanished around the side of the building in a heartbeat, as though he's still dressed up in a mask and a dead king's name, as though he never stopped doing this at all. 

He breathes in deep and steps forward into the alley. It's empty. There's no-one manning the main entrance, no-one in the comms. room either. Loading bay, he thinks. That's where all the most obviously valuable equipment -- except Archie -- is kept, and it's probably the easiest place to hold a whole bunch of people hostage without being noticed at street level.

As soon as he reaches the top of the stairs, Dan sees he's right. There are three of them visible, surrounding Judith and the others, a flurry of gestures and raised voices. They're in the centre of the loading bay, and for all the bad lighting there's no way Dan's getting to them without being seen. 

Well, he thinks, no point trying to play this one by stealth.

Judith's eyes flick up as he moves forward. 

"Get back!" she yells, harsh and terrified. "They've got a -- "

It's too late.

* * *

At the other end of the room, Adrian hears the shot. 

He sees Dan falter and begin to fall, and something at the core of him cracks apart, fathoms-deep and terrible as the splintering of polar ice.

* * *

In the seconds between the burst of pain in his left shoulder and his head cracking against the bottom step, Dan sees a whirl of movement out of the corner of his eye. Swift, precise, devastating; the gunman hits the ground before he does. 

After that he doesn't see anything for a while.

He wakes up groggy, with a dull ache in his shoulder and a blinding one in his head. He stretches his left arm experimentally, and pain screeches through every fiber.

"Don't try to move it too much," says a voice. "It should heal perfectly well, but the bandages will need to stay on for now." The voice is familiar and almost steady, but the relief in it is palpable.

Dan opens his eyes and blinks a few times, in surprise. Adrian is perched on the edge of his bunk, gazing down at him with wide, shadowed eyes. His hair's in his face, and the knuckles of one hand are bandaged. And he actually looks worried -- worried as hell, in fact. Which surprises Dan. Because okay, they were friends, or something like that, once upon a time, but for years he has been sure Adrian didn't care about actual, living, breathing people, only the ones he could count out in their billions on his computer screen.

"What happened?" Dan asks. "Do you know who they were? Did -- did anyone else get hurt?" At the thought, he sits up automatically, then winces as he wrenches a protesting muscle. 

Adrian's hand hovers an inch above Dan's good shoulder for a second, before dropping back to his side. "No," he says, in his best reassuring voice. "Everyone is fine. It appears they were fairly small time criminals, looking for communications equipment to sell on the black market. We'll need to be doubly alert from now on, but I doubt that _that_ particular group will be troubling us again."

"I should say." Dan sinks back thankfully against his pillow. "Not that I was much use out there. We might all be dead if it wasn't for you." He looks up and straight at Adrian, genuinely smiling at him. It feels good to be able to do that. "Thanks."

He thinks he sees the faintest suspicion of a flinch cross Adrian's face at the word. Then Adrian looks down, away from him, and the shadow that falls across his eyes turns them into glittering hollows.

"Don't," he says, quietly. "Please."

Dan frowns. "Don't what?"

"Don't thank me."

"Huh?" 

"Whatever I do now, it hardly -- I was wrong." Adrian closes his eyes. His voice is low and pained, as though the words are made of ground glass. "When it mattered most, I was wrong."

Alarmed, Dan sits back up -- carefully this time, though. On the list of things he has ever expected to hear Adrian Veidt say, that one... well, it's not even on the list. It's practically _unnatural_.

"Adrian?" he tries, softly.

"I'm sorry." 

Make that two. 

Dan used to think he'd give his right arm for that, to hear Adrian admit that he didn't have it all figured out, that he had no right, that what he did was just plain, flat-out wrong. But not like this, not in this nightmare where they're hiding like hunted animals and the admission doesn't alter anything, anyway.

Besides, he's seen the world change since then, and he knows for a fact that Adrian isn't the only person to have had a hand in it.

Tentatively, he reaches out and touches Adrian's arm. At the pressure of his hand, Adrian's eyes snap open. But he doesn't look annoyed or even surprised, just sad. Endlessly, depthlessly sad.

Dan swallows. "Look," he begins, "I'm not going to pretend I agree with what you did, or -- or the way things have turned out. But I know you didn't mean for -- _this_ \-- to happen, and I'm sure you had no clue that it would."

"And for that, I am sorry."

Sighing, Dan squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again. He knows that that's all wrong, that it took more than the attacks for Steele and his Party to take over, that whatever he did Adrian shouldn't be apologizing for not being omniscient, for Christ's sake, but he's all out of words to say it, and besides, his thoughts are a little too hazy for a philosophical argument right now. So instead he just pats Adrian's arm and says, tiredly, "I know there's no point telling you not to be. I'm not even sure what I think about it all. But -- _I_ don't blame you. Not for all this. Not any more."

Adrian nods, and for a brief second he even smiles. Faint, fleeting, probably forced -- Dan isn't sure anything he has said has gotten through -- but it's something.

He looks exhausted, again, Dan realizes. For that matter, so is Dan himself; he can hardly manage to keep from yawning. Being shot does tend to take a lot out of you. 

"Are there any spare bunks tonight?" he asks. "It must be past curfew by now. You shouldn't go home."

"There's no need." Adrian's composed himself already, and he doesn't protest at the change of subject. "I should take over on radio duty. I'm sure Judith would appreciate some rest."

"No." The firmness of Dan's voice surprises even him. " _You_ could use some rest." He rolls over onto his good shoulder, so he's facing the wall, and shuffles up to make room. "You can sleep in here. It'll be a little crowded, but we're both pretty used to discomfort by now."

"Really, Dan, that won't be -- "

"I'm not offering, I'm insisting," Dan says, still much more authoritatively than he feels. "Come on. You can get undressed, I won't peek."

He's still not sure Adrian's convinced, but a few minutes later a cool body slides into bed beside him. He feels rather than hears Adrian draw in a deep breath, as though he's about to say something, but then he doesn't. Dan isn't sure whether or not to be relieved.

He doesn't sleep much, and he's pretty sure Adrian doesn't either, but they lie side by side, eyes closed, just barely touching, until the morning breaks like rain.


	4. Chapter 4

_ October 1990 _

_Dan starts paying attention to the news again when the news starts getting harder to come by. There are fewer headlines these days, fewer titles on the shelves. Last time he dropped by the local newsstand, the racks were barely half-full._

_Some of the papers have folded, unforeseen and costly legal troubles having materialized, seemingly out of thin air. At least a third have been bought out by InfoCorp, a new and faceless conglomerate whose house style seems to include the expunging of any discernible opinion, and, Dan guesses by the omissions, quite a few of the facts, too. But most are just eviscerated, running scared, their coverage carefully innocuous._

_Same goes for the TV channels, and radio stations too. All news coverage has to be approved since the Media Security Act passed in August, which means current affairs tend to be a lot less current by the time you hear about them now. Pirate stations are popping up all the time, of course, on unofficial frequencies, but they rarely last more than a week or two before they get shut down. The underground presses and the pamphleteers get more stuff out there -- they're harder to trace -- but you have to know the channels to get them, find out who to speak to, and Dan doesn't exactly associate with the criminal fraternity much these days._

_Laurie still doesn't watch the news. He can't blame her -- read between the lines and it's all depressing as hell -- but it means they mostly spend their evenings in separate rooms._

_But for all Dennis Steele's ranting about conspirators and terrorists and Manhattanites (the word's taken on a whole new, sinister significance since '85), Dan's not reminded quite so painfully of the past. There's less starry-eyed optimism out there, less of Adrian preaching to the world as if he has a right, less gushing about how everything's going to be different and better now. That, at least, seems fitting._

_Dan can't even see Adrian in the background today, and this is a fairly huge political event. The Republicans and the Democrats are working together, at last: the Allied Democratic-Republican Party of the United States of America. Pretty soon people will just be calling it the Party._

_It's a huge ceremony, faintly ridiculous, and, Dan thinks, a little sinister too. Steele's spouting something about solidarity, about the necessity for unity in the face of a threat to the human race, about how global security sometimes has to take precedence over the rights of the individual and how anyone too selfish to realize that doesn't deserve to call himself an American. One party. One nation. Instinctively, Dan hears the words that come next, even if they're not spoken aloud: one world._

_It isn't long after this that people start getting arrested._

_At first it's people with criminal backgrounds, violent agitators, troublemakers. Then activists, members of political pressure groups. Then anyone who dares criticize the Party too vocally in the press. The headlines get smaller as the names get bigger._

_Then people stop getting arrested. They just disappear._

_Then the headlines disappear.  
_

April 1992

They were almost friends. Easy to forget that, after everything. They worked together when the situation called for it, even had a couple of drinks and talked shop and politics from time to time. Dan always thought he was pretty well-informed when it came to current affairs, but he used to find himself feeling ignorant next to Adrian. At first. Then he'd forget to feel ignorant, and just be amazed that anyone could know so much -- about _everything_ \-- and manage not to be a bore about it. 

And even after Ozymandias retired, Adrian always looked pleased to see him. Dan's still pretty sure that was genuine.

_Almost_ friends. Except that, no matter how many conversations they had, Dan never could quite get a handle on what Adrian was actually _like_. He seemed more a collection of ideas than a real person. 

Dan still doesn't think he really gets it, what Adrian's about, what's going on behind the smilingly neutral face he shows to most of the world, but at least now he's sure there _is_ someone in there. Somebody human, not just a bunch of intelligence circuits firing and calculating away as coldly as the inner workings of a computer.

For instance, back then he'd never in a million years have expected to find Adrian bringing him a cup of coffee, let alone bothering to learn how many sugars he takes with it. Coffee and... some sort of maize crackers, apparently. 

Dan puts down the screwdriver he's been holding, glad of the chance to rest his healing shoulder, and peers at them.

"The latest in government-issue cuisine," Adrian informs him, smiling wryly. "Interestingly, they've managed to duplicate the taste and texture of rubber exactly."

Dan frowns. "How would you know? Have you ever _tasted_ \-- wait, never mind, don't answer that."

"Studio 54 wasn't _entirely_ dull," Adrian says mildly, his expression deadpan. 

Dan's ninety percent sure he's joking, but he just shakes his head and shoves a cracker in his mouth instead of speaking. It _is_ pretty disgusting, he has to admit.

"You're here after curfew again," he points out, once he's finished his mouthful. 

"Serkan has asked me to stay. There were several new arrivals this morning, and he seems to think that they find my being here... reassuring." Adrian's expression turns pensive for a second, but he snaps out of it right away, with a smile. "Don't worry. I promise to be in bed before two."

"He's right," Dan says. "They do. And by 'bed' I'm assuming you mean my floor. I should start charging you rent." 

Adrian smiles amicably at him. They were never this familiar, before -- but the way they live now, the world they live in now, forces intimacy. And of course Adrian always was a master at putting those around him at ease; that's what made trusting him so instinctive, the possibility of doing otherwise so unthinkable.

Dan's wiser now, though. Wise enough to be... not discomfited, exactly, but acutely aware of how easy it's been to slip back into being almost-friends again. Working together, reminding each other to sleep and eat lunch, sitting up late and chatting about inconsequential things (only not really, because day-to-day stuff isn't inconsequential, not any more) and avoiding any mention of Karnak or Rorschach or Laurie or the millions of innocent people who were killed -- who _Adrian_ killed -- before this whole current mess even got started.

It's not that he thinks Adrian's got some hidden agenda this time; that seems pretty unlikely, given their circumstances. It's the fact he seems so intent on working himself into the ground, the way he insists on exchanging sympathetic words with every single refugee who passes through HQ, like he's carefully folding away each sad story to add to his list of personal regrets. And Dan keeps finding himself wanting to reassure Adrian, to say something, anything, to make him stop it. He's not sure he should want that. On some level, it still feels like a betrayal. But he does; he can't help it. Adrian _gets_ to him.

"You've altered the panelling on Archie's sides," Adrian notes, interrupting his train of thought. "I hadn't noticed that before. A lighter material?"

Dan shakes himself. "Yeah. More durable, too. Good thing I changed it when I did, really -- it's pretty much impossible to get hold of materials without a government licence now. They come down like a ton of bricks on unauthorized imports."

Yeah, he thinks, before he lets his brain switch off and focus on weight and maneuverability and what the hell he's going to do next time he needs a spare part instead. _Almost_ friends.

 

_ May 1991 _

_It is 03:00 EDT when the phone rings._

_Adrian is not asleep. His thoughts keep him awake later and later at present; but perhaps this is preferable to the alternative. He has started to dream again. He is usually drowning._

_When he hears the words "repeat attack," "Dr. Manhattan," "splinter group," they form an impossibility. Jon is galaxies away, and the only other bodies with access to the technology are Veidt Industries and --_

_And the US military. Adrian's heart stills in his chest._

_"...state of emergency," the voice on the other end of the line is saying. "We'll need you here as soon as possible."_

_"Of course," he replies. "I shall leave for Washington directly."_

_By the time Adrian has dressed and arranged to have his private jet ready for take-off, the sky outside has lightened a few degrees. He stands at the window for a moment, looking down, numb. This is a perfect move by Steele and his ever-widening circle. It will allow them to push through some of the more repressive measures at which more moderate members of the Party still hesitate; to point suspicious fingers at anyone who even dares question their wisdom._

_There is not even any point telling the truth, now. Their stranglehold on the media is almost complete. Adrian would simply be arrested, another traitor, the story left to sink without trace._

_There is a white van parked across the road, in full view of his penthouse. It has been there for days, and there are three others at strategic locations around the bottom of Veidt Tower. Unmarked and, at the moment, unofficial._

_Not for much longer, though; he knows that now._

_He ought to be shaking with rage, or perhaps even fear. Instead, there is nothing but a dizzying, yawning emptiness that he will come to know as despair._

 

April 1992

"Face it, Jude. We're _screwed_."

"We'll just have to find another way. There's always another way." Judith stops two paces inside the workshop doors, determination evident in the set of her mouth. Serkan almost walks into the back of her.

"Screwed," he says again, shaking his head.

"Guys?" Dan turns from his enthused explanation of Archie's landing mechanism, his eyes widening with concern. "Do we have a problem?"

Adrian places his coffee cup on an empty worktop and joins them, keeping his expression carefully calm.

" _I_ should say," Serkan begins, his voice pitched a fraction higher than usual. "We're-- "

Judith cuts him off with a warning look. "The South End group has been..." She swallows. "Apprehended. Which means we have no access to false documentation right now. We've got six people to get out tomorrow, and they'll never pass the checkpoints without it. So we're going to need another way of getting them across. Do you think you can get them over in-- " She waves a hand.

"Archie," Dan supplies. Judith's always seemed uncomfortable with Dan's anthropomorphizing. In a situation like this, she says, too much sentimentality can only be a danger. 

It's a viewpoint Adrian understands, at least, though he's not sure he can say he subscribes to it any more.

"Yeah," Dan is nodding. "We can get out of HQ via the tunnels, the same way I got Archie in here. Once we're out over the harbor, we should be clear to get away. What time do you need me to be ready?"

"And there's the problem," Serkan cuts in. "They've got transport, but their driver won't risk taking a direct route from New York. Which means they won't be arriving 'til after curfew, and the city's gonna be crawling with Patrols. Which means the second we bring them back here, they'll be traced to us. Which means we're screwed. Like I said."

"So we don't bring them back here," Adrian suggests, calmly. "We meet them at their arrival point, take them directly to the harbor, and Dan meets us there with Archimedes. Surely that's the obvious course of action?"

"You've _got_ to be kidding me," protests Serkan. "They watch the place night and day, we'd be picked up in no time-- "

"It's a possibility," Judith admits, ignoring him. "But it _will_ be difficult to pull off without being seen. Any ideas?"

"Curfew lasts from eight until seven-thirty, and despite the size of the police force, there's no way they can keep the whole of the harbor covered at all times. There have to be movements, shift changes, and they'll be scheduled at headquarters." He raises an eyebrow. "And I'm sure not every Patrolman is as pure of purpose as the Party would have us believe."

"Bribe someone for the info, you mean? We don't have that kind of money."

"I do. And that means we do." Adrian catches Dan's surprised glance out of the corner of his eye, and for a second he almost feels gratified. "Not an ideal solution, I'll admit, but these people's lives are in danger. We must simply do what's necessary."

"Dangerous, but it could work." Judith frowns. "The only problem is finding our guy."

At that, Adrian smiles. "I believe Dan and I may be able to help you there."

* * *

"James Morgan. I know that guy." Dan frowns, the name tugging threads of old memory out of the back of his mind. "Hey, didn't you put him away back in '70?"

Adrian nods. "Three times, if memory serves. A top-level gangster, but one without loyalty. A mercenary. Happy to exploit anyone who came his way. That doesn't seem to have done his present career any harm, however. He appears to be a lieutenant."

"Yeah, I remember. He gave me the creeps. Just the way he looked at people." Dan and Rorschach dealt with Morgan themselves, once or twice. A really unpleasant piece of work, one of those guys who could make your skin crawl without even opening his mouth. He never seemed particularly bothered about being busted, either; he'd just give them this look that was defiant and sort of... mocking. Hungry, even. Dan grimaces. "Reckon he'll sell us the information?"

"I'm sure he can be persuaded." 

For a fraction of a second, Dan thinks he sees a shadow cross Adrian's eyes. Then it's gone, and he's not sure whether or not he just imagined it.

"However," Adrian's saying, "I think it would be best if I went to bargain with him. Alone."

Judith stares at him. "Do you think that's wise? I mean you sent the guy to _prison_ , for Christ's sake."

"Exactly." Adrian half-smiles, inscrutable. "I remember Morgan quite well. The idea of my asking his help will probably appeal to his... sense of humor."

"Won't that just put you in more danger?" Dan asks, frowning, his insides tightening. But already Adrian has that hard, determined look in his eyes that means he's made up his mind, and Dan knows better than to argue.

* * *

Two hours before curfew, Adrian breezes into the comms. room and produces a single computer disk from his inside pocket, to admiring looks all round.

Dan jumps to his feet, only now realizing how nervously he's been waiting.

"Well?" he demands. "What'd you get?"

"Morgan was quite obliging, as it turns out. Patrol times, shift patterns, positions. It's all there. We have an hour or so before we need to move."

"Wow." Serk pounces on the disk and shoves it into the computer. 

Dan stares. "Yeah. Wow. That went smoothly." _Too_ smoothly, he thinks.

"Indeed." Adrian smiles blandly. "I should speak to Judith. If you'll excuse me..."

For a second, Dan's left blinking after him. He should be pleased, he knows, this is just what they wanted, but... something's not right. No narrow escapes? No delays? No problems _at all_? That's pretty rare. Besides, there is something closed-off and careful in Adrian's expression, something that, Dan has learned, over the years, means he is not telling the whole of the truth. What if-- but no, even after everything, he can't imagine that Adrian would sell them out. He's seen too much to believe that. 

A second later he's out of the door and chasing Adrian down the empty corridor, his heart in his throat.

"Wait."

Adrian stops outside the kitchen door and turns to face him with a look of mild surprise that Dan is sure is entirely fake.

"What happened?"

"Hmm? Just what I said." 

"So what did all of that set you back?"

"Very little, as a matter of fact." Adrian won't lie to him outright, not now, but he's not volunteering any information either. Typical. 

Dan's eyes narrow. "So what did you tell him?"

"Please. You know me better than that." Adrian's voice is steady, his expression opaque, unfazed by the implicit accusation. Or perhaps he can just tell Dan doesn't really believe it himself. 

And it's infuriating. Dan won't let Adrian start talking down to him, shutting him out again like this, he _can't_. Not when they're just getting to know each other again; not after he's almost started to trust Adrian, _care_ about him, for fuck's sake. He grabs Adrian by the wrist and pulls him, unresisting, into the empty kitchen. The door slams shut behind them.

"That's not an answer," he says. "Adrian. What did you do?"

"Dan. I assure you, it would be better if you didn't pursue this line of enquiry."

" _What did you do_?"

Adrian gives him a glance that's marble-cold, almost _defiant_ , and entirely at odds with the casual tone of his voice. "I can be very persuasive when I so choose. Let's leave it at that, shall we?"

"Persuasive? What, you _threatened_ the guy? Beat him up?"

"No." Adrian looks at him as though he's stupid. Well, no, that's not exactly likely. Unnecessary violence has never been Adrian's style. 

Dan shakes his head. "What, then?" he demands. "I just don't see what else you could mean. Unless, I don't know, you _seduced_ him or someth-- " 

The sentence starts out half-joking, but he breaks off as snatches of yesterday's conversation spring to mind, unbidden. 

_Appeal to his... sense of humor_. That way Morgan had of looking at people, that made Dan think he knew how girls felt when assholes wolf-whistled at them. The shadow across Adrian's eyes. 

"Oh. Oh my God." Dan stares, stupidly, for a minute. His throat's gone dry. 

Adrian just holds his gaze, head high. He doesn't say anything.

"What the fuck?" Dan manages finally.

Adrian shrugs, unconcerned. "As I expected, Morgan remembered me quite well. I could hardly offer him information. We are the enemy, after all. And... well, he simply refused to consider monetary payment. In some ways that makes good sense. The incomes of Party employees are monitored very carefully, you know."

" _Jesus_ , Adrian." Dan's not sure what's worse, the thought of-- of-- well, he doesn't even want to think about it -- or the fact that Adrian doesn't even sound _bothered_. "Maybe you _should_ 've just beaten it out of him."

"Dan." And he can still manage it, that disappointed-teacher look, the one that instantly makes whoever's on the receiving end feel two feet tall and five years old. He doesn't even need to say _grow up_. 

Of course he couldn't. Beating up a guy who's a cop _and_ in with the criminal fraternity could bring all manner of unwanted attention down on their little operation. Dan's still got the injuries from their last incident, and that was minor compared to what the big-timers or the Party could inflict. Still, maybe that would be okay, if it were just the two of them, but there are dozens of other people here, too, people who trust them, who they have a responsibility to. 

"Besides," Adrian goes on, gentler, "If anyone should have to -- " 

Dan can't help it then. He loses it. 

"Adrian," he spits, "Get over yourself." 

Adrian blinks at him, stunned. _That_ 's almost satisfying. "I beg your pardon?"

Dan sighs, scrubs at his eyes, tries to calm his voice down a bit. 

"Look. I know why you're doing this. I know you feel awful about everything, you feel responsible. Even if I don't agree with what you did -- I know you didn't want all of this. But it wasn't _just you_ , Adrian." 

He's expecting Adrian to interrupt him, to argue, but he doesn't respond. He's just looking at Dan in confusion. His eyes are wide, all of his assurance suddenly gone.

"If one man couldn't save the world, one man couldn't screw it up this much either. Hundreds of people contributed to... this. Thousands. And we could really use you being halfway sane right now and _I_ can't stand seeing you act like this. You might not give a crap what happens to you but I _do_ , okay, so just stop being so _reasonable_ about it, stop being a fucking martyr, just-- just-- Oh, fuck." Dan breaks off hopelessly, sighing. "You don't even _get_ it, do you?"

He's not sure what kind of reply, if any, he's expecting, but all he gets is that same blank, bewildered stare, and his anger sinks back down to sad frustration as quickly as it reared its head.

It's obvious the words aren't getting through, and maybe there aren't even words for what he's trying to say, anyway. _I need you_ is too selfish and _There are more important things than your fucking penance right now, okay?_ is too cruel, and all he really wants is for Adrian to react, speak to him, give some sort of sign that he's feeling _something_ , and it doesn't seem as though that's ever going to happen.

So he almost gives up then, only another of those small, stupid little impulses grabs him, and before he's allowed himself to think too much about what he's doing, he's reached out and taken Adrian's hand. 

Adrian looks down at the touch, his eyes uncomprehending. Dan feels his own heart falter, but then Adrian doesn't pull away from him, so he doesn't let go. 

There are still small scabs on Adrian's knuckles, from the fight with the gangsters weeks ago. Dan runs his thumb over them, very softly. As though he's smoothing in ointment; as though the touch could soothe everything away.

"Dan," Adrian's tone is light again, but this time he's not smiling. Dan even thinks he detects the hint of a tremor in his voice. "What _are_ you doing?"

Dan's not sure if he knows the answer to that, and even if he did, he couldn't put it into words. So instead of replying he just shakes his head and gently tugs Adrian into a hug. 

And Adrian... lets him. He doesn't hug back, exactly, but he doesn't tense up or step back, either, and Dan figures he can probably count that as a victory.

"You're an idiot," he says, against Adrian's shoulder. "I don't know why I never realized it before. An _idiot_." 

He hears Adrian's breath catch at the words, and he's already pulling back, looking up to search Adrian's expression in case he's just said something horribly wrong. But then Adrian's hands are at the small of his back, not letting him go. 

Adrian closes his eyes and leans forward just a little, so that his forehead is resting against Dan's. They stand like that for a long moment. 

Halfway through it, Dan realizes someone's trembling. It isn't him.


	5. Chapter 5

April 1992

Dan's been waiting for eleven minutes. Nine safe minutes left. He taps his fingers nervously on the arm of his pilot's seat.

The city is eerily quiet after curfew, and he can't hear much except the lapping of the water and the rapid thud of his own heartbeat. He isn't as stressed out as he could be, though. He keeps getting distracted, thinking about this afternoon. The awfulness, and the yelling, and the hugging, and the unsure sideways look Adrian gave him after Judith burst into the kitchen and dragged them both off to talk strategy, like he honestly didn't know what to say. That was almost frightening.

He almost jumps out of his skin at the quiet knock on Archie's right windscreen. There are eight figures standing inside the tunnel mouth. The six from New York, Maria, and Adrian, pale as a ghost in the dark. He's at the back of the group. Keeping lookout, Dan guesses. His face is visible, just about, but Dan can discern nothing from his expression; it's as carefully, serenely neutral as ever.

Still, no time to think about that right now. Dan fires up the engines in readiness, hovering a couple of feet above the tunnel floor, and opens the side doors. "Okay, get in. We don't have much time."

The refugees pile on board. Then a thought strikes him, and he jumps out of his seat, sticking his head around the door.

"Hey, I could probably use an extra person here. I know it's all extra weight, but this shoulder's still a little painful, and if we run into any trouble -- well, I can't fly with one arm." It's not entirely true, and pretty transparent. Dan thinks Adrian raises an eyebrow, but he stays quiet.

"Sure," Maria says. "You want me or -- Adrian, you've been in this thing before, right?"

"Makes sense," Dan agrees, without giving Adrian time to answer. "We need to hurry."

Adrian frowns. "Maria -- will you be okay returning to HQ alone?"

She grins. "I've been living on the wrong side of the tracks here longer than you have. Know this place like the back of my hand." 

"Come _on_." Dan holds out his uninjured arm. It's a useless gesture -- even an ordinary person could make the jump without assistance -- but after a half-second's hesitation, Adrian nods, and takes his hand anyway.

_  
August 1991 _

_He's working on Archie when the call comes. The phone rings and, five minutes later, Laurie appears at the top of the stairs, white-faced._

_It's Sally. Her bank account's been frozen. Some kind of hitherto unheard-of legal trouble. She's not scared so much as embarrassed and outraged at not having been able to pay for her Martini, or at least that's what she claims. Dan and Laurie don't need to check to know that the same thing will have happened to them, too. It was bound to reach them eventually._

_The Party doesn't exactly view masks as a major threat, but it's not fond of them, either. They're the sort of people any incipient resistance movement might rally round, try to claim as figureheads. They could be an inconvenience._

_They set up aliases, and backup-aliases, years ago. Those will safeguard them for a while, but they'll be tracked down eventually. And when that happens... well, they've got radio parts and ammo stockpiled in the basement, things they can use as currency if they have to, but those won't last forever. There has been talk of roadblocks, too, extra checks, travel restrictions. If they want to escape they have weeks, maybe days._

_By the time Dan's finished up and headed upstairs, Laurie's already packing._

_"C'mon. We shouldn't waste any time."_

_She's right, of course. It'd be safest to get out now, before they're trapped. But everything in Dan revolts at the thought of running and doing nothing, of standing by and letting it all happen again._

_"There's another suitcase under the bed. You should get packing."_

_He takes a step, stops, frozen._

_"Hurry up. What're you just standing there for?"_

_"I-- "_

_"You_ are _coming?" she says. "Dan?"_

_He looks down; cleans an imaginary smudge off his glasses._

_"Dan?"_

 

April 1992

They get back two hours before dawn, with a quarter-tank of fuel and enough cloud cover to keep them relatively invisible from the harbor. Out over Massachusetts Bay, Dan kills the forward motion and just hovers, looking down over the city, the slumbering blackness, the occasional white slice of a searchlight in the dark. 

Beside him, Adrian's looking straight ahead. He's been quiet on the journey, smiling pleasantly but not saying much, sort of folded in on himself. Dan looks sideways at him, the paper-lantern luminosity he has in the darkness, like something lit up from within, the quick, animal movements of his hands.

Dan thinks he'd like to take hold of them again, still them with his own and mumble something stupid and soothing, but the frustration that propelled him earlier has dissipated now, and he feels like the moment has passed.

"Well, I'd say that was a success," he says, instead.

"Indeed," Adrian says, and turns sideways in the chair to face him. "Though I must say, you hardly appeared to need my help."

"Hey, not true. You got those people to the ship."

"I was simply there for safety in numbers. I'm sure Maria could have managed perfectly well by herself."

That's not what Dan's talking about, and they both know it. Silence draws out between them.

"I'm sorry," Dan sighs, finally. "About this afternoon. Yelling at you, I mean."

"I'm sure it was deserved," Adrian says, too lightly, and Dan knows he can just leave it there, if he wants, just not mention anything else, and they'll go back to talking trivialities, never speak of it again. He also knows he'd never forgive himself if he let that happen.

"Not really," he says.

Adrian blinks at him, and turns to look back out through the windscreen. His expression is unreadable. "I had the opportunity to help," he says, after a moment. "To save lives, perhaps. I couldn't do nothing. I know you understand that."

"Yeah," Dan nods. "Yeah. Of course." And sure, put like that, it does sound perfectly reasonable. He just wishes it were really that simple.

It's not, of course. Dan was a crime-fighter himself, once. He knows that doing nothing isn't always an option, and he was partnered up with Rorschach long enough to know that that attitude sometimes turned pathological. But he can't ever remember being so calmly accepting of personal suffering, he never sought it out the way Adrian seems to. There's something almost childlike in his determination, Dan thinks. It's as though he's trying to restore some kind of balance, as though the world will be somehow set to rights if only he hurts enough, if only he's sorry enough. 

And Dan wishes he could say or do something to change that, but he can't think of anything to say that could possibly be convincing, and Adrian's staring out at the black sea so impassively Dan doesn't quite dare to touch him.

"That's why -- me and Laurie," he says, instead, and Adrian turns to glance at him in surprise.

"Yes?"

"That's sort of why we -- we're not. Together, anymore."

"Dan -- I'm sorry. I hadn't realized."

"It had been coming for a while, I guess." He's not sure what's compelling him to share, except that maybe it's a relief to talk about it to someone who knew them both before, and that maybe, just maybe, the small intimacy will make Adrian feel that he can reciprocate. Not likely, but it's worth a try. "After '85... well, I guess she was done with worrying about the whole wide world. Wanted a normal life. I thought that was what I wanted, too."

"And wasn't it?"

He shrugs. "If things had been different, I guess. But when it came down to it -- I knew I could help, if I stayed. I couldn't run away."

"Of course not. You're a thoroughly good man, Dan."

"So are you."

Adrian looks away. He goes moments without speaking, but when he finally does, he's pulled himself together and the inscrutable mask is back on. "It's getting late," he says. "Shall we?"

"Sure. Judith's probably dying to interrogate us about how it went."

"Actually, I believe I'll return to my apartment. I -- I've been imposing on you too much, lately."

Dan frowns. "Are you sure that's wise? There's at least an hour before curfew lifts. Besides, it's not as if I _mind_ , or anything." 

Then it dawns on him that that's not really the issue. It's not as if Adrian's ever seemed worried about abusing his hospitality -- if you can call a patch of floor and some spare bedding hospitality -- before now, after all. But after what's happened, well, it's pretty understandable if he doesn't feel like putting on his charming face and answering a bunch of questions from half of HQ. Dan can't imagine what he'd want to do in the same situation, except that it would probably involve taking a shower and hiding out somewhere for a while. But the idea of leaving Adrian alone to beat himself up, or pretend everything's fine, or whatever, isn't right either. His brain absolutely refuses to entertain the possibility.

"Look," he says, finally. "If you don't want to speak to everyone -- " He sees Adrian's eyes widen a fraction. " -- you can just go and crash out straight away. You can have my bunk. I'll just tell the others you've, I dunno, got a migraine or something. Besides, I'm pretty sure half your clothes are in my room, anyway."

"Since you insist." Adrian rolls his eyes as though he's humoring Dan, but there's something grateful in the way he leans back into his seat, and after a moment he closes his eyes. Dan fires up the engines, and heads for home.

 

_ August 1991 _

_Laurie's eyelashes are coated with mascara, more thickly than usual. It's something she does when she's determined not to cry. She's got a hollow, determined look in her eyes, staring straight ahead. Sally, too, even though she's smiling, her fur hat jammed on defiantly against the wind._

_First call for their flight. They've got false passports, which Dan's pretty sure should pass muster. Safer to get out through legitimate channels, while they can, if they can, than to try and sneak out like refugees. Dan dreads to think what might happen if they got caught doing that._

_"Call me," he says. "If you can. Write. Something. Let me know you're safe."_

_Laurie nods, bites her lip. Her hair flies into her face. He can't see her eyes. "What will you do?" she asks him._

_Dan glances at the security guard stationed by the boarding gate, and lowers his voice. "I know there are resistance groups springing up. I'll find one of them, I guess, see if they want my help. Archie could be useful."_

_"I -- I." Laurie shakes her head, then looks up at him, and smiles briefly. "We ought to go. Be careful, okay?"_

_She places a hand on his shoulder and moves in towards him, but aims her kiss at his cheek, not his mouth. He's surprised when he doesn't mind._

 

April 1992

The water pressure is weak, but the shower is flayingly cold, cold enough to erase, almost, the still-felt traces of the afternoon's... episode. Transaction.

That is all it was; that is how he will compartmentalize it. It is completed now. Over. He will not indulge in self-pity.

Adrian stares down his reflection in the bathroom mirror, daring it to argue. His own eyes look back at him tiredly. 

There is a single bite-mark turning purple where neck meets shoulder. It stands out violently in the light from the naked bulb, that and the healing scabs on his knuckles the only spots of color on his skin. His fingers flex involuntarily, the nerve-memory of Dan's touch, perhaps the most tender he has felt since childhood, clinging like gossamer. 

No. Adrian shakes himself; regards himself sternly in the mirror. It will not do to think about that. 

The door opens behind him. "Serk insisted that I bring you some aspirin. He's quite concerned about your migraine. Better not tell him it's imaginary."

Dan stops just inside the door and lets it swing closed. In the mirror, Adrian sees him catch sight of the bite-mark, sees the concerned expression, the way he inclines his head, the incipient question in his eyes.

Adrian turns to face him, and forces a smile. "It's nothing," he says, levelly. This is not a lie, he insists to himself. In days, the mark will have faded. The skin is not even broken.

"It doesn't _look_ like nothing."

"I'm not a child, Dan. I knew what I was doing."

"That's what worries me." Dan takes a step closer, looking up at him imploringly. "Look. I know you did this to help people. I know it worked. But no more. Please."

"Dan--"

"I know you can't seem to manage to care about yourself. So do it for me. I can't stand seeing you hurt yourself. I really can't." 

"I'm not hurt," Adrian protests, and then stops as, eyes fastened on his, Dan reaches up and touches his cheek. Just barely, light as a breath of air.

He blinks and stills, not with nervousness or surprise but because _he has no right_ to kindness, to stand here and let himself be gentled, touched like something precious, someone deserving of comfort. The thought makes him feel like an intruder, like a thief. He has no right.

"I can't understand why," he says, when he can trust himself to speak again, "You have no reason to pity me."

Dan's hand drops back to his side. "It's not pity."

"What, then?" Adrian asks, but his voice dies on the words. It is not like him, to be afraid of knowing.

It does not matter, since he gets no answer anyway. Dan just looks at him, very gently, and says, "Get some rest."

He has no strength to argue.


	6. Chapter 6

May 1992

"You seen Adrian?"

"Huh?" Maria glances up from the Xeroxed newssheet she's reading. "Oh, he came by looking for you about half an hour ago. Try your room."

"Thanks."

The room's empty. No sign of Adrian; just the unmade bunk and Dan's books scattered across it, just where he left them this morning.

All except one. Dan's heart sinks when he sees it on the windowsill, neatly closed. The pamphlet, the one whose pages he dug out of back copies of the _New Frontiersman_ and stapled together himself. Rorschach's journal. 

Shit.

He hadn't even been _reading_ it -- he doesn't do that so much, now he's got Adrian to talk to when he's awake late into the night -- he just moved the books after losing his glasses down the side of the bunk, then promptly got dragged away by Judith before he had time to replace them. He didn't even think about the possibility of Adrian finding it.

Okay, sure, Adrian must have known it existed; he's probably read it all before. But Dan's pretty sure a reminder of Karnak, of the fact Dan lost a friend and partner to his plan, isn't exactly what he needs right now. It probably isn't what Dan needs, either. 

Because for the past few weeks, since that whole awful incident with Morgan, things have been different. Nothing major, but Adrian seems... well, if not happier, then more open around him. They talk more naturally. When Adrian smiles his eyes aren't always hollow. And Dan -- well, he's started to feel like maybe it's okay that he cares about this man, that he can't seem to blame him for everything that's happened since '85, that he honestly doesn't believe he deserves to suffer. The little voices in the back of his head that sound like Laurie and Rorschach aren't happy about it, but he can usually bring himself to tell them that _they_ aren't here, _they_ don't know, and he just has to make his own mind up about this, thanks. Mostly that shuts them up.

He's started to think that maybe they can just get on with being friends. For real, this time.

Bringing up the past isn't going to help anyone. Sure, Adrian seems to have come out of himself a little, but Dan knows he's still pretty damn far from being okay. And if he closes himself off again, if he won't let Dan help him -- well, Dan decides he'd rather not even think about that. He needs to make this better. Before it screws everything up. Before this new, fragile, hopeful thing between them gets shattered. 

He doesn't know how, or what the hell he's going to say to Adrian, just that he needs to find him. Preferably now.

As he's hurrying down the corridor he almost walks into Maria, leaving the kitchen with her face still hidden behind the headlines. Something about dissent in the party ranks, the government collapsing from within, the kind of thing the underground press is printing all the time. They live in hope, even if it's mostly misguided.

"Look where you're going!" Maria snaps, glaring at him over the top of the paper. Then she catches sight of his expression, and her annoyed frown fades, her eyes widening in sympathy. "Dan, you look worried as shit. What's up?"

"Huh? Oh, no, nothing's up. Still looking for Adrian, that's all."

"You guys have a fight or something?"

Something of an odd question, but Dan doesn't have time to wonder about that right now. He shakes his head. "No. No, nothing like that. I'm just worried he may have -- gotten the wrong idea about something, I guess. It's not important."

Maria raises an eyebrow, and gives him what he thinks is meant to be an understanding smile. "I just heard someone go out the side entrance. Might have been him."

"Great. Thanks." Dan rushes off, and he's already halfway down the corridor when she calls after him.

"Dan?" she says. "Don't worry. Everyone argues. You'll be fine."

"Um. Sure," he replies, wishing he were, or that he knew why Maria was so interested all of a sudden. "Thanks."

It's not until he's out of the door and standing in the bright afternoon that it dawns on him. She's assumed-- she thinks that they're-- well, that there's _something_ going on between them. Him and Adrian.

That probably ought to startle him more than it does. But when he thinks about it for a moment, Dan can kind of see how it might look that way, what with all the sleeping in the same room, and the hours they spend together, and the fact he no longer spends every spare minute worrying over Laurie now that Adrian's around. And while Adrian doesn't exactly go around loudly proclaiming the fact he prefers guys, he doesn't exactly do anything to hide it, either. But--

Dan shakes himself. He'll set Maria straight later, he guesses, though he's sort of surprised at how little it bothers him. He's got more important things to worry about right now. 

He turns out of the alley and threads his way through the streets, walking as quickly as he can without risking undue attention. It isn't long before he catches sight of Adrian, a hundred yards or so in front of him, heading in the direction of his apartment. He hurries closer. Adrian must recognize his footsteps, because his shoulders tense and he sort of pulls himself a little more upright, but while he doesn't slow down to let himself be caught, he doesn't pick up his pace either. That's something.

Dan catches up, and stops Adrian with a hand on his shoulder. He's not sure what he's been expecting -- awkward questions, maybe, or annoyance -- but when Adrian turns round the expression in his eyes is just bruised and resigned. Dan thinks that might be worse.

"Hey," he says, "Where are you going?" He steps to the side of the busy sidewalk; they might be able to talk without being jostled or shoved there. Adrian doesn't join him.

"My apartment," Adrian replies, perfectly reasonably. "I have a few things to attend to."

"Since when? It's not like you're ever _there_ , anyway."

"I must confess, I'm a little puzzled by your sudden interest in my domestic affairs."

"You don't _have_ any domestic affairs." Dan sighs. "Look, I know you saw the journal. And I can see you're upset." Adrian blinks at him. "So come back with me. Let's talk about this."

"HQ is hardly the ideal place for a private conversation, Dan."

Dan thinks for a second. He takes a deep breath, and then looks squarely at Adrian. "So let's go to your place," he challenges. "You can invite a friend over for coffee, right?"

Adrian's eyes betray nothing, but after a moment he gives Dan a small nod, and starts walking again. "I suppose I can," he says. "Come on, then."

Dan races to catch up with him. His heart's still pounding, but he feels a little more hopeful than he did five minutes ago. A little.

* * *

Functionally, the apartment is little more than a storage space. Adrian can count the number of times he has slept there since arriving in Boston on his fingers, and the cupboards are almost bare. There is, therefore, no coffee. He does, however, have a small packet of loose green tea, given to him by Mr. and Mrs. Chong on the ground floor, for taking the time to help mend their radio. He hadn't wanted to accept anything for the favour, of course, but refusal would have been rude. He passes them unofficial newssheets and pamphlets from HQ, too, when he gets the opportunity. Their daughter Jennie, an investigative reporter, vanished three months ago, and he knows they are hoping to see some code, some hidden message, some name or phrase that they will recognize. They are like so many others -- and he will never be able to assist them all, never even know them all --

He shakes the thought off. He will not burden Dan with his brooding. There will be time enough for it later. 

The kitchen chairs are hard and uncomfortable, so they sit on the bed, instead. The blankets are pulled up neatly, with barely a wrinkle. Adrian folds his legs up underneath him and sits very still, watching Dan blow nervously at the hot surface of his tea. 

The curtains are drawn, and Adrian does not move to open them. He has had enough of clarity for one afternoon.

He has read Rorschach's journal before, of course, but finding it on Dan's bed, in the room where he has slept so many nights of late, has thrown the present into sharp relief. The reminder, he knows, is a necessary one. Dan has called him a friend, has shown him concern, has offered him compassion -- and he has allowed himself to behave as though it were possible for him to accept. He has begun to forget himself. 

In honesty, Adrian cannot say that he has regretted Rorschach any more than any of the others. There was no love lost between them. But he was Dan's partner -- a bond deeper, perhaps, than that of friendship -- and he is dead now, sacrificed to the grand plan that turned out to be no more than a grand folly. However good, however generous Dan is, he may never forgive that. There is no reason that he should.

Of course they are not friends. Dan's affection is just a kindness of which he is not -- can never be -- deserving. And the truth should not disturb him. If anything, he should be grateful. At least he has been brought back to reality before losing touch with it completely. 

He resigned himself to his guilt, and to his solitude, years ago. He needs to remind himself of that fact, to distance himself. He needs to stop being so _ridiculous_.

And that is what he should be doing, not sitting opposite this man who stubbornly refuses him the contempt that is his due, whose earnest decency makes him feel a hundred times more unworthy, waiting for him to speak. 

And yet, and yet. There is some awful hope in him that simply will not die.

"He was my friend," Dan says, suddenly and quietly.

Adrian waits for him to elaborate, and the brief moment of silence that follows threatens to suffocate him. He cannot quite meet Dan's eyes.

"He was a _good_ friend," Dan goes on, at last. "Or as good as he knew how to be, anyway."

Adrian sips the last of his tea and listens, unsure quite where this is leading. It would be right to speak, to offer some condolence, but he cannot think of a single fitting word to say. He is not even sure that there are any.

"I couldn't tell you what was going on in his head most of the time. But for some reason, he cared about me. That's why I keep it. The journal. It was all he left behind. I owe him that, at least."

"Of course," Adrian manages, nodding. "In any case, you're not obliged to explain to me. It was among your personal things. I should never have opened it. I apologize."

"That's not what I'm getting at." Dan sighs, closes his eyes, opens them again. Then he shuffles a little closer, gently pries the empty teacup out of Adrian's hands and places it on the floor, next to his own. Adrian realizes he has been staring down into it, as though the wet clumps of tea-leaf in the bottom might offer him a solution. He looks up, blinking, then back down in surprise, as Dan takes hold of his empty hands, running a thumb gently over one palm. The gesture, he realises, is intended to be soothing, and it tears at him.

"We knew each other for years," Dan goes on. "And I wish I'd been able to get through to him, I really do. There was a good guy in there, underneath it all, I think. Some part of him that was still... him. But that doesn't mean-- well, it's not like we agreed on everything."

"Dan-- "

"He was wrong about you, for one thing. _I_ was wrong about you."

"Wrong?" Of course, Dan _was_ wrong about him, for years. He accepted him as a friend, a compatriot, somebody on the side of right. But somehow Adrian doesn't think that is what he means. "I don't-- "

"I didn't think you cared. About people. Not really. I mean, I know the way you worked things out made sense, from one point of view, but -- well, I didn't understand how you saw the world. I probably never will. I just knew there wasn't room for individuals in it."

"It sounds rather as though you were perfectly _right_."

"Maybe. But I just thought you'd carry on the same way, you know? Be the next president, run the world, carry on looking down on the rest of us because you knew best and nobody else was smart enough to get a say. I certainly never expected to _see_ you again. Except maybe on TV."

"I can't imagine you were devastated at the idea." Adrian tries for quiet amusement to cover up the tremor in his voice. It doesn't quite work.

"Yeah, well. Things change." Dan looks him in the eyes. "You sure did."

Adrian blinks at him, startled. There is no response to that that he can think of -- or that he dares to say aloud -- so he just inclines his head questioningly, instead.

Dan is still holding his hands. His touch is light -- so light a single breath might blow them apart -- but constant. He breathes in deeply and looks down at them before continuing. "You're not -- you're not up there in the clouds, or the ivory tower, or wherever, any more. You're just a person trying to help, same as the rest of us. And you're _good_ at it."

"Hardly. I simply do what I can. We both know people who have given far more than I."

"Adrian." Dan glances back up at him, and, for the first time today, a tiny smile appears on his face. "You spent an hour and a half listening to Serk talk about his grandmother last night. That goes above and beyond the call of duty. And anyway, it's not the helping I was talking about. It's the being a person."

Adrian raises an eyebrow, cautiously. He does not quite have the courage to smile back. "I wasn't aware the human condition was an acquired skill."

Abruptly, Dan's expression becomes serious again. "Listen," he says. "You screwed up pretty fucking hugely. I won't deny that. But you're _not_ the only reason Steele was voted in. It isn't because of you that what's left of Congress passes everything he puts his name to without a second's protest, or that so many ordinary people just stand there peeking through the curtains while their neighbours get arrested. It's not Jon those people are scared of. It's not big blue energy bombs. It's the Party. Yeah, you did something -- well, something I can't even begin to understand. But it doesn't make you the devil."

Adrian looks down. "One might say worse, because real."

"Will you shut up?" The words are tinged with exasperation, but Adrian can still feel Dan's eyes on his face, intent and soft. "Just listen to what I'm trying to say, okay? That's not all there is to you. I can see that. I just wish you could, too."

"It certainly seems like the most important thing."

" _No_." Dan's voice is savagely emphatic, and Adrian does shut up then, shocked into silence. "Jesus, Adrian. It's like you don't even _see_ yourself. You're not in a boardroom full of executives anymore, you don't have to be polite, but you ask people how they are anyway. And not just the important ones. And you listen to the answers. And you make great coffee, and you go all gooey-eyed over mangy alley-cats, and you hum "Lady Stardust" under your breath when you don't realize anyone's listening. Judith comes to talk to you when she's feeling shitty because she says you're good at calming her down. And I -- well. I just like being around you."

Adrian looks back up in amazement. It is Dan who is staring down at the bedsheets now, almost as though he is embarrassed.

"You're too kind," Adrian says, softly.

"I'm not _being_ kind." The exasperation is sharper this time, but Dan still does not let go of his hands. "I don't care about you because I feel like I _should_. I just do. I -- oh, God." The resignation of those last words is tempered with something else, something warm and earnest. 

So Adrian is not surprised, exactly, when Dan leans in and presses a chaste and careful kiss to his lips. The kiss is a question, not a demand. There is no force in it. 

It floors him anyway, and he gasps, wide-eyed, against Dan's mouth.

"Shit." Dan pulls back, disentangling his hands from Adrian's, turning red. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry. I don't know what I was-- "

"No. Don't be sorry." The words escape Adrian before he has time to think about them, and then he is clutching Dan, his mind whirling desperately, and he still knows that he can never deserve this, that he should not even hope, but he is also quite certain that if Dan lets go of him in this moment he will fall from the edge of the world and die in space, miles above its surface. He cannot let that happen, even if he should. "Please," he whispers.

For a moment he does not dare speak or blink or even breathe. Then Dan looks wonderingly up at him, and then they are holding onto one another like drowning souls, and Adrian cannot even bring himself to care that he is trembling. Inside his head, a million voices scream at him -- _you have no right, no right, no right_ \-- but he does not let go.


	7. Chapter 7

It's just after three a.m. when Dan's bedroom door inches open, admitting a thin oblong of hallway strip light, and Adrian a few seconds later. 

Dan's being lying there for what seems like ages. For once he's avoided radio duty, pleading exhaustion, and he had sort of hoped that Adrian would just let his screwed-up sense of responsibility slide for one night and join him. 

In hindsight, that was probably a little too much to expect right now. He's not too disappointed, even though it means he's spent the last three hours wide-awake and fidgeting and replaying the afternoon's conversation in an endless loop in his head. 

And the other thing, of course. The kissing thing. He can't forget about that. 

They didn't talk about it, afterwards, just clung onto each other until Dan's arms and his neck began to ache, and then Adrian pulled back from him and blinked a few times and said that they should really head back to HQ. He still sounded a little shaky, and it made Dan want to do stupid things like reach up and smooth his hair, or whisper _It's okay_ \-- even though he wasn't sure if it was okay, or exactly what 'it' was anyway -- or kiss him again, until he stopped trembling, stopped worrying, stopped thinking about anything just for a minute. 

Instead, he just agreed and nodded, and took one of Adrian 's hands and squeezed it gently. 

Neither of them let go until they were leaving the apartment. It was just a little thing, but hopeful; the thought of it makes him smile in the darkness.

Perhaps Adrian sees the smile, because a second later he says, "Dan?" in a low, quiet voice.

"Hey. You okay?" Dan props himself up on his elbows, peering through the darkness. Then he frowns. "You look exhausted."

"Perhaps a little," Adrian admits. He takes one step forward, and then stops in the middle of the room. Dan sees him glance at the pile of spare bedding that's folded tidily in the corner and decides that, no, he's not letting that happen tonight.

"Come here," he says hastily, beckoning, and, to his intense relief, Adrian does as he's told, perching carefully on the edge of the bunk. Their fingertips brush, but Adrian stops short of taking his outstretched hand, like he's still not quite sure that he's allowed to do so -- or, more likely, not sure that he can allow himself.

That's okay. Dan gets it. He knows it's going to take more than a kiss and a couple of conversations for Adrian to start thinking he deserves to be cared about, or to let down the guard he's spent most of his life holding up. Dan's just going to have to take the lead himself for a while, he guesses. Not something he's used to doing, but he can try. No: he has to try.

He sits upright, linking his fingers through Adrian's. "Come to bed?" he suggests.

Adrian glances away for a split-second, and bites his lip. The gesture is too unsure and childlike for him, and it makes Dan's insides twinge painfully. "Are you-- ?"

" _Yes_ , I'm sure," Dan insists, in what he hopes is a suitably no-nonsense tone of voice. He tugs back the edge of the blanket. "Get in. You need to sleep."

There isn't exactly a lot of room in the bunk, and they end up lying face-to-face, inches apart. It's too dark for Dan to glean anything from Adrian's expression, so he reaches out with his hands instead -- as though he'll be able to read Adrian's thoughts in the rise and fall of his breathing, the tension in his muscles, the way his skin is cold as cream. He touches Adrian's shoulder, just lightly, runs a hand down his arm, lets it come to rest on his hip. 

Adrian's breath catches in his throat and he doesn't tense up exactly, but he goes still. Abruptly, Dan remembers that the last person Adrian had touch him like this was that asshole Morgan, and the last thing he wants to do is drag that memory up again.

He swallows. "Are you ok?" he whispers. "Is -- _this_ okay?"

Adrian closes his eyes for brief, agonizing seconds, then opens them again. "Yes. That is -- I -- you don't have to do this, Dan."

Dan bites back a sigh that is part frustration, part relief. "I know," he says. "I know I don't have to do anything. I _want_ to. I meant what I said. Earlier. I like being around you. I like _you_."

"I can't fathom why. I've certainly done nothing to deserve it."

"Good thing that isn't how it works, then," Dan replies. There's more that he'd like to say -- _Stop thinking like this. I lost one person because he couldn't let go, he couldn't let himself be human. I couldn't stand for the same thing to happen with you. Please, just give yourself a chance_ \-- but he figures it might be best not to push things any further right now, so he just slips his arm right round Adrian's waist instead. He can feel how carefully slow Adrian's breathing is, can almost count the seconds it takes him to relax into the touch. 

But he does. And after a moment, Dan feels Adrian's lips brush his temple in what might be a half-formed word or a kiss. He doesn't ask which. He's not even sure it matters much. Right now, this is enough.

 

_ August 1991 _

_After Laurie gets out, Dan starts doing research. He's been out of the loop so long that he isn't really sure where to start, except that he knows there are people out there printing pamphlets and newssheets, broadcasting on unofficial radio frequencies, circumventing the Party's censors, and that they're probably his best chance of getting through to any resistance group in the area. So he takes his biggest risk in six years. He goes out and asks._

_At the first newsstand he tries, the only papers on display are the approved ones, their headlines urging vigilance and praising Steele's hard-line stance on terrorism._

_Dan scans the street quickly before he speaks. "Got anything else?" he asks, casually._

_The guy manning the stand just looks at him blankly. It's the same with the next one._

_But at the one after that, he strikes lucky. The gruff, gray-haired vendor gives him a measuring glance -- he doesn't look like a Party agent, obviously -- then nods at the Patrol van on the corner, and tells him to come back in half an hour._

_He gets hold of pamphlets, first, and then issues of a cheaply-copied underground newspaper that's called the_ Searchlight _, and then the_ Runagate _, and will probably go through a dozen other names before it gets shut down for good. He trawls the airwaves for the unofficial news channels. A lot of them are run by crackpots. Some of them aren't._

_And eventually, he finds out where the meeting-places are. Curfews are a recent development, and there are still a few bars that stay open in defiance. Backstreet dives, mostly; the kind of places that have never been legit. It makes sense. Nowhere above-board would risk allowing them in, and besides, better to be slung in the cells for one night as an illicit drinker than indefinitely for conspiracy._

_Dan gets to know people. He lets slip, once or twice, that he has transport, that he's willing to help. And eventually he gets invited to real meetings, at private apartments. It takes weeks, and he's surprised; if anything, he expected it to take longer. They must be desperate._

_It's at one of these meetings that a young woman, broad-faced and plain, is pointed in his direction. They talk, about trivial things at first. She's guarded. That's okay; Dan's getting used to being vetted like this._

_"I'm part of a group," she says, eventually. "We're heading to Boston. I'm in touch with a couple of people there already. They've set up in an abandoned building. It's perfect; facilities, accommodation, storage. We're setting up a safe house, helping people get up to the border and out of the country. We need transport."_

_"I can be ready tomorrow," Dan says, and he's surprised that it's that simple. But it is. There's nothing keeping him here now._

_The woman grins broadly, and sticks out her hand. "Forgot to introduce myself," she says. "I'm Judith."_

 

May 1992

As is his habit, Adrian wakes early. Dan will not stir until his alarm clock beeps, and when it does he will jerk into wakefulness like a puppet pulled upright on its strings, blink at the world in bewilderment for a moment, then hit the snooze button and bury his head beneath the blanket again. Adrian has grown accustomed to this, as he has grown accustomed to the gray, early light that filters into the little room each morning, and even to the slow, steady sound of Dan's breathing in sleep. 

The sensation of another body in bed beside him, though, is unfamiliar; that of an arm resting lightly around his waist, doubly so. The occasions on which he has allowed lovers to spend the night have always been rare, and he has certainly never been much given to sleeping in their beds himself. In any case, in recent years he has hardly had the time or inclination to bother with them at all. He probably shared his bed with Bubastis more often than he has ever done with another human being.

His right arm is numb. He extricates himself carefully, and climbs out from under the blanket. Dan does not wake up, just makes a soft, drowsy sound and rolls over. He appears to be smiling.

Adrian wonders, sometimes, what it like to be so peaceful, so honest and earnest and decent, to do the best one can in one's own life and to be content with that. Once, he would have looked on those qualities with something close to contempt. Perfectly acceptable, perfectly appropriate, in ordinary people, but lacking in vision; irrelevant to his plans for the wider world. Now, they humble him more completely than anger ever could. Dan cares, earnestly and honestly; refuses to give up on him, even knowing everything. The kindness is more than he will ever deserve. It makes his heart contract with shame.

Abruptly, he stands up. He wraps himself in Dan’s bathrobe, and leaves for the shower room, closing the door behind him silently. There is still hot water in the pipes. Perhaps it will help blast the thoughts out of his head.

Even by HQ's standards, it is a busy day. There are supplies to be collected, new arrivals to be reassured, new temporary beds to be set up in one of the empty rooms on the third floor, and a Patrol van circles the block three times more than usual, so Judith decides that somebody needs to keep lookout on each entrance at all times. It is long past curfew by the time Adrian and Dan are alone together again.

Dan is pouring coffee when Adrian walks into the kitchen, though the clock is edging close to eleven and neither of them has radio duty that night. He has no need to stay awake. It is a small, normal thing, though. Adrian thinks that perhaps he does it for comfort.

"You want a cup?" Dan asks him.

Adrian manages a smile in reply. "Thank you."

Their fingers brush as Dan passes him the mug, and Adrian feels his heartbeat quicken. He sets the mug down on the table; lets Dan's thumb brush his palm, the inside of his wrist. The sensation is still new, still unfamiliar -- but, he realizes, he has been missing it today. 

He catches the thought immediately, before it has time to run away with him. Bad enough that he is allowing himself to accept affection from a man who by rights should hate him. To become reliant on it would be a hundred times worse.

The kitchen door clicks open. Maria’s head appears in the gap. She takes a single step inside and then stops short, staring directly at them. 

"Sorry," she says. "Didn't realize I was interrupting." Then, she smirks. "Told you it'd be okay." She shoots what can only be termed a significant look at Dan, and lets herself back out of the room.

Adrian raises a questioning eyebrow, and Dan flushes right to the tops of his ears.

"She just assumed," he says, quickly. "Yesterday. Before I found you. And I didn't have time to correct her. She thought we were -- well. I mean, not that we _are_ anything, but... Shit. Don't worry. I'll set her right." 

There is something uncertain and close to sadness in his voice and the way he is looking at the floor, and suddenly it occurs to Adrian that he has been thinking very selfishly. 

Dan has been so patient, has tolerated his guilt and self-pity and has comforted him so uncomplainingly, that it is easy to forget that he, too, has needs and worries, that he is an ordinary man and not a carved saint. Of course, he must feel Adrian's reticence as though it were rejection; from the outside there is no difference.

Well. He will be selfish no longer. If he no longer has the strength to deny himself that which he does not deserve, he can at least avoid hurting Dan with his indecision. True, he can offer nothing of the magnitude of what Dan has given him -- but that is no reason to be ungenerous.

"There will be no need for that," he says, softly, and leans towards Dan and kisses him.

For fractions of a second, Dan's eyes widen with surprise, and Adrian's heart falters. But then he closes them, encircles Adrian's waist with his arms, and relaxes into the kiss. Adrian can feel him smile.

After a moment, Dan breaks away, linking his fingers with Adrian's instead. "C'mon," he says. "I'd still prefer it if we didn't have Maria sticking her head round the door to gawk every five minutes."

“I’m glad we agree.” Adrian allows himself to be led down the corridor. Dan's bedroom door shuts with a click behind them. 

Adrian leans back, so that he is pressed up against it, holds out his arms -- palms up, a gesture of surrender -- with an inviting look, draws Dan close to kiss him. 

He is on familiar ground now. This part he understands; this part he is good at. He slides a hand underneath Dan's shirt, the waistband of his trousers; grazes a hipbone with his fingertips and hears Dan's breath hitch gratifyingly. He pulls back, then, and Dan's eyes flutter open in confusion. Adrian smiles faintly as he drops to his knees.

He reaches for Dan's zipper. The floor is hard and cold beneath him -- and then he cannot help but recall the last time he was in a similar position. There is a twist of disgust in his stomach; his fingers fumble, robbed of their usual dexterity.

No. Adrian forces the thought down. He gave himself to Morgan without a moment's hesitation-- and Dan _cares_ for him-- this is the least he can do--

He swallows, closes his eyes, and tries not to remember thinking he would choke on the taste of skin.

"Adrian?"

Dan's hands are on his shoulders, then. Stopping him, stilling him.

"Adrian. Look at me. Come back."

With difficulty, relief and trepidation warring inside him, Adrian opens his eyes. Dan's face is level with his own; Dan is crouching before him, frowning at him worriedly. His shoulders dip with relief when Adrian meets his gaze.

"'Come back'?" Adrian asks.

Dan takes one of his hands and squeezes it. "I don't know where you went just then, but I think I have an idea. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna try to make you talk about it, or anything. But it didn't look like fun."

"I didn't wish to worry you. I'm-- "

"Don't you dare apologize." There is no sharpness in Dan's tone, though, and he sighs deeply before going on. "You know what you said, last night? About me not having to do this?"

"It's true."

"Well, _you_ don't have to do anything, either, you know. I don't want-- well, I mean, not that I _don't_ , because you're gorgeous, you know that, and half the country's probably wanted to get in your pants one time or another-- but that's not the point. The point is, that's not important right now. _You_ 're important. How you feel is important."

"In the grand scheme of things-- "

"To me. And I just want to make you feel better."

"You do," Adrian whispers. It is true, even amidst all the other things that he is not saying, and he is almost afraid to let the words out – as though they are living things, and will flutter away into the night and out of his control forever.

"Then that's all that matters," Dan tells him. "This isn't business, Adrian. You don't have to pay me back for caring about you, for fuck's sake. That's not how it works. That's not how _people_ work. You can just let someone else take care of you for a while, if you need it. It's okay. You're allowed."

Adrian opens his mouth to correct him, to say that no, it is ordinary, decent people, the kind of people Dan is used to dealing with, who are allowed, not people who have murdered millions for nothing. But the pleading way Dan is looking at him silences him -- and besides, there is a small, very selfish part of him that want to believe that what Dan is saying is true, and he is losing the strength to fight it with every second.

"Come here," Dan says, standing up. Adrian lets himself be tugged to his feet and led over to the bunk, and sits down on it beside Dan.

He cannot quite tell where this is leading. Perhaps they will just sit here, hardly touching, and talk. He does not know what he will say. But then Dan looks at him questioningly, as though seeking permission, and reaches up to unfasten the top button of his shirt. His hands are not quite steady, but he does not fumble.

The breath stills in Adrian's throat.

"Taking care of you," Dan says. "Let me."

After a moment, Adrian nods and exhales. The breath becomes a shudder on its way out, and whether it is one of relief or of sorrow he is not sure.

Dan stops what he is doing, and reaches up to brush Adrian's cheek with his thumb. "I've already seen the worst part of you," he says. "I know your dark secret, and I'm still here. All you have to do is accept it. I don't know what you're afraid of."

Adrian looks away in anguish, then, because he does not have the words to say that Dan's kindness touches a need in him that is raw as grief, that terrifies him with its intensity; that the outer layers of him are being stripped away and he does not know what he is becoming; that he does not know how to do this. He does not know how to accept it. He does not know how to be human. He does not even know how to ask.

"You know it was unforgivable," he says, instead.

But perhaps that is enough, perhaps Dan reads the rest of it in the tone of his voice or the uncertainty in his eyes, because then he finds himself being hugged tightly, and Dan is whispering, " _I_ 've forgiven you," against his ear in a voice that is almost fierce.

"Dan-- " Shock seizes Adrian; these are words he has never expected, never even hoped to hear. But he does not have time to dwell on them, because Dan is still talking.

"Listen," he is saying. "I know you can't just change the habit of a lifetime overnight. I'm not asking you to. I just want you to trust me. That's all. I know it's gonna take time, but I'm not going anywhere. Nothing you've done yet has scared me away, after all. What could?"

"That-- is a compelling argument," Adrian manages. 

He is still reeling, still half-dizzy with amazement, but the tension that has been coiled inside him all evening is slowly beginning to uncurl. He turns his head a fraction, so that their faces almost touch. Dan nuzzles against his cheek, and then they are kissing again, deeply but gently and without urgency. Adrian is not quite sure which of them initiated the kiss, but perhaps it does not matter much. He is simply sure that he does not want it to end.

He lies awake until late that night, after Dan's fingers have stopped trailing soothing patterns across his skin, and after Dan's breathing has turned into snoring. It would be false to say that he is no longer afraid, that he no longer feels unworthy or plagued with doubt -- but there is something else there, besides, something warm and hopeful and new. It is unfamiliar; he does not know what to call it. He clings to it anyway.

And, for the first time in years, when he falls asleep he dreams, peacefully, of nothing.


	8. Chapter 8

June 1992

They don't _tell_ anyone, exactly, but perhaps they don't really need to. Dan can't even put a name to their relationship, this warm, new, fragile thing, not really. They're more than friends, but not exactly lovers. Circumstances kind of force them to spend most of their time together, but Dan finds he doesn't mind that, and he's pretty sure Adrian doesn't, either. 

Not that it seems to matter what Dan calls it, in his head. It just gets quietly accepted that they work together unless they're forced not to, that Adrian sleeps in Dan's room, that in the comms. room or around the kitchen table they always sit side by side and that there are glances and touches and words between them that are private, outside of the general hubbub of discussion. Nobody says anything. It just becomes part of the way things are. 

Which figures, Dan guesses. After all, in a situation like this one, you really don't care if the guy who uses his contacts to get your medical supplies and the guy who flies refugees over the border in his airship are sleeping together.

They aren't. But that's okay, too. Dan's never really even thought about sex with another guy, before, and the idea isn't weird or unappealing like he might have expected, if he _had_ considered it. But that's not to say it doesn't make him a little apprehensive. And besides, he hasn't forgotten the night after they first kissed, the way Adrian just got on his knees before him like it was expected, the tight-wound tension in his movements and the way he closed his eyes like he was trying to shut something out. Or the relief in them when Dan made him stop, helped him get free of whatever nasty little memory had been about to get its claws into him. When -- _if_ \-- it happens, it has to be what they _both_ want, and not part of some twisted notion of relationship etiquette. It has to be right.

Of course, that hasn't stopped people -- and by people, he means Maria -- from assuming. Dan's pretty sure she's been gossiping to Serk, too, because he's stopped barging into Dan's room to rant unannounced when he's in a panic, and started knocking and waiting a respectful few seconds before pushing the door open instead. That's a plus -- even if, usually, they're just sitting like this, Adrian cross-legged on the floor, scrutinizing a newssheet; Dan sprawled out on the bunk, picking out odd sentences over his shoulder.

"'Party Plot to Destabilize Steele'?" he reads out, curiously.

"There's no source cited. Probably just a rumor. This, however--" Adrian taps a fingernail on one of the smaller items; a riot in Houston, the third in as many weeks. "--is interesting. It suggests that an a coordinated attempt on the local Party headquarters was behind at least some of the violence. Resistance cells working together. And you'll have noticed that Steele has been making fewer televised appearances of late. In the face of enough organized resistance, it's possible the Party might look for a less... controversial leader."

Dan's eyebrows arch in surprise. "You think? Steele _is_ the Party, as far as most people are concerned. He's practically Big Brother."

"Unlikely, I'll admit. They'd risk in-fighting. Factionalism. The whole organization could fall apart."

"We should be so lucky."

Adrian smiles, just slightly, and places the newssheet beside him on the floor. He turns his head, half-facing Dan, and Dan leans in and kisses him lightly. 

He wishes they didn't end up discussing the Party so much, sometimes; that speculation and furtiveness weren't the stuff of their lives; that the burden of guilt Adrian still carries with him wasn't so all-pervasive. Dan can bring him out of himself for longer, these days, can get him to smile and accept gentleness more often, but the moments when Adrian gets that faraway, sad look in his eyes and just closes himself off are still far from rare, and it still hurts like hell every time.

There's a knock at the door, loud and urgent, and this time only a fraction of a second passes before it flies open.

Serk's face is drawn, and there's a tuft of hair at his forehead sticking up at an odd angle, like he's been running his hand through it, anxiously. "Do you guys know where Maria is?" he demands.

"She went out on a supply run," Dan offers. "Ration vouchers."

"Yeah -- three hours ago! She ought to be back by now."

Adrian frowns. "He's right. The rendezvous point is thirty minutes away, and she knows the area well enough."

Serk squeezes his eyes shut for a second, sighing. "Yeah. That's why she insisted on going alone. I shouldn't have let her. I should've gone with her anyway."

Dan gets to his feet. "Come on. Let's check the rest of the building before anyone starts panicking. Do you know who's been watching the entrance since she left?"

"One of the newer guys. Nick, I think, or maybe James."

"I'll ask them," Adrian cuts in smoothly, unfolding himself from his seated position. He gives Serk a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "I'm sure Dan will help you search the rest of the building."

Serk nods gratefully. "Thanks. I guess she could be in the loading bay. I'll check her room; it'd be just like her to wander off there without telling anyone she got back."

But Maria isn't in her room. Or the loading bay, or the kitchen, or the rest of the building. Nobody has seen her return.

An hour later, she still hasn't shown up. A Patrol van circles the block, slow and leisurely. Then another one. Then Judith yells from the comms. room and they all go running, straining to hear the radio bulletin that's coming through on one of the more indistinct unofficial frequencies.

There's been a Party raid on a building off Bristol Street, two blocks from the pickup point to which Maria was headed. No known casualties; a couple of members of other resistance groups missing; one guy who was quick enough to slip past the perimeter of vans and back to his group's base in Allston before he could be hauled in for questioning. The Party's claiming the building was in use by a drug ring, but the guy who got out of the area didn't see any contraband being dragged out of there by the Patrols, just people.

"We should go look for her," Serk insists immediately.

"No way," Judith says, cutting him off. "Curfew's coming up, we've no idea where she might be, and the place is gonna be _crawling_ with Patrols. Even if she didn't get picked up, she could be hiding out anywhere. We wouldn't even know where to start. If she did-- well."

There's no need for elaboration. No-one knows, really, what happens to the disappeared, where they end up if they don't talk. 

_If_. Of course, there's always the other possibility -- that they got her and she's cracked, she's spilling her guts to them right this minute -- but nobody brings it up. It's too soon for that; even thinking it still feels unkind. Disloyal. Dan knows you're not supposed to trust anyone, these days, or at least he knows he's supposed to know it. But that doesn't make the idea of one of their own selling them out any easier to contemplate. It goes against every instinct in him, even now.

Serk shakes his head, scrubs a hand through his hair. "I-- Shit. I need a minute," he says, and walks out into the corridor.

Adrian's been silent through all of this, just sitting with eyes straight ahead. Dan's about to reach out for him, just to reassure or try to work out what he's feeling, when Adrian turns to meet his eyes, steady and level, and takes his hand instead.

Dan blinks in surprise. It hasn't occurred to him -- it never does -- that Adrian might think _he_ needs comforting. 

"She's your friend," Adrian says, softly. "For all that she can be an inveterate nuisance at times."

"She's everyone's friend. We're a team."

"I--"

Dan braces himself for the inevitable _I'm sorry_ , because in front of Judith it will sound like a simple condolence and he can't argue, not without giving everything away. But then Adrian breaks off, falls silent and just squeezes Dan's hand instead.

Judith eyes their linked fingers. She doesn't look _pleased_ , exactly -- well, that would be pretty inappropriate -- but her expression's the tiniest bit less grave than it was a moment ago. "Would you guys keep an eye on things here?" she asks. "I'm going to go after Serk. He looks pretty upset."

"Sure," Dan says, nodding. "I think he feels responsible. He's beating himself up over it."

"He really _should_ have gone with her. It was a new contact, and we didn't know the rendezvous point. It was a two-person job."

"Yeah. But Maria's pretty impossible to argue with when she's set her mind on something. And anyway, there's no point in him torturing himself over it now. All we can do is wait."

Dan feels Adrian's fingers tense over his as Judith leaves, and shoots him his best stern look, hoping that it's adequate to convey, _Don't even think about thinking this is your fault_. He covers Adrian's hand with his free one, so he's clasping it in both of his own. 

They sit together for minutes without speaking, listening to the crackle of static. Adrian doesn't pull away from him, or break eye-contact, or get that bland, shut-off look in his eyes that means he's mentally retreated to some private corner where he can torment himself with his guilt. And, somewhere beneath all the worry, Dan feels a tiny, totally inappropriate flicker of happiness.

 

_ December 1991 _

_Dan still speaks to Laurie whenever he can, from payphones at first -- the operator has to take details before connecting international calls, but there's a resistance sympathizer in City Hall who passes them records, and even Dan can't deny there's a perverse pleasure in giving the names and ID codes of Party bigwigs -- and then from HQ, when they get their lines set up._

_The last time they speak is December 22nd. She sounds harried when she's called to the phone, and though her "Hey," rises with pleased surprise when she hears his voice, like it always does, there is still a note of tension in it._

_"We're leaving," she tells him. Though the French authorities aren't as sympathetic to the Party as some, being conspicuously American in Paris with false papers is getting more and more dangerous. They need to hide out somewhere less risky._

_"Where are you headed?" he asks._

_"There's a group in the UK. Somewhere pretty rural, in the west. It's self-sufficient, apparently, and they don't work against the government, or anything like that, so they don't get bothered by the cops. It's just a hideout, basically." Her tone turns rueful. "A refugee camp, I guess you could say."_

_Dan swallows, tries to keep his tone upbeat. "Doesn't sound much like your scene."_

_"Yeah, well, neither does a cell in Immigration. There are a few of us going. Me, mom, Hélène, Gareth." Names he's heard her mention before, but can't put faces to, like characters in a novel. "We've got transport. We're leaving in two days."_

_"Take care," he says, uselessly. "Let me know when you arrive. If you can."_

_"Of course. And Dan-- I--"_

_She breaks off, and Dan hears a voice in the background say something in rapid French. Laurie responds, "D'accord, un moment" -- she's become pretty fluent over the last few months -- and then, to him, "I have to go. Sorry."_

_"Okay." Dan hangs on for a moment -- he's no longer sure how to end their conversations, now that_ Love you _isn't appropriate or true anymore, and_ See you soon _would be laughable. Then the line clicks, and she's gone._

_Three weeks later, Serk hears a noise, a little unfamiliar click, on the line, and they have to rip them out and get in new ones with new numbers, numbers Laurie doesn't know. Dan tries her Paris number from a callbox, but it's dead, disconnected. All he can do after that is scan the airwaves and the bulletins, and ask around whenever he runs into someone from another group. And hope._

 

July 1992

And then their world begins to shrink. 

It draws in around them. First, there are reports in the newssheets, and on the radio stations. There is talk of dissent in the Party rank and file, of organized resistance groups preparing to mobilize in the countryside, of international relations becoming strained. They don't have any way of ascertaining whether the reports are true, and everyone they speak to holds a different opinion. 

But there's a mood of uncertainty in the air, of expectation, something incipient. Perhaps Steele and his government sense it, because suddenly the Party gets tough. Tougher, rather. 

The Patrols get more numerous, the reports of arrests and disappearances more frequent. Steele issues orders to the FCC -- and official news coverage is suddenly restricted to one TV channel, one Party-endorsed newspaper. Everyone else gets stuck with running fluff, candyfloss: sitcom re-runs and nostalgia-fests on TV; vacuous celebrity interviews in the press. 

The newssheets alternate between outrage at the Party's attacks on the underground, and crowing over what are perceived as desperate actions. (Judith furrows her brow when she reads that sort of thing, and says she'll believe it when she sees it. Adrian murmurs something about how Steele _does_ seem to be getting a little defensive, but refuses to commit to a prediction. Dan thinks he's afraid of getting too hopeful. Things are probably going to get worse before they get better, after all.)

Their contact with other groups gets more sporadic, but the communications, when they come, are urgent in tone. There's no time for politeness, no extraneous banter, not any more. Maria doesn't resurface.

Word gets back to them that the Canadian border is no longer safe. Checkpoints and controls are being increased, and then the safe-houses taking in refugees start to be raided. Nobody's sure whether the Canadian government is allowing it, or whether the secret police are simply acting outside their jurisdiction, too quickly and too quietly to be stopped. Besides, the safe-houses aren't exactly run by respectable citizens. Perhaps no-one cares that much.

Their new supply of fake IDs runs dry, and then the supplier gets busted. The trail could still lead back to them, so Judith decides it isn't safe for them to trawl for another source, or to act too conspicuously right now. They're going to have to suspend activities, and just hole up for a while.

So that's what they do. They watch the doors, and run out in pairs to do the most necessary errands, and run back as quickly as they can, glancing behind them all the time. Serk manages to pick up some discreet handheld radio devices from a contact in another group, and insists that anybody who leaves HQ takes one. They always do, even if it's out of sympathy for his guilt after the Maria situation as much as concern for personal safety.

Dan thinks that he might start to find the whole situation unbearable, if it weren't for Adrian.

That's a thought that, six months ago, Dan couldn't have imagined ever occurring to him. But it's true. Their relationship still isn't a defined one, not really, but he's just gotten used to having Adrian _there_ , to care about and curl up with at night, to the way Adrian's eyes seek out _his_ reaction first when he makes a suggestion, to the fact they can just be together and be comfortable without having to talk much when they're both exhausted. And slowly, so slowly, Adrian seems to be accepting it, the way they are. Sure, he still gets distant, still drifts away, haunted, when they're alone, but it's easier for Dan to drag him out of it with kisses and reassurances, back to the moment in which it's just them. And on the rare occasions -- rarer, now -- when he wakes shuddering at some unwelcome dream or memory, he just lets Dan hold him without protest, instead of getting up to brood. Those sound like little things, but somehow Dan finds they make him unreasonably hopeful.

They also make him want to keep touching Adrian, all the time -- just in little ways, just to stay connected. Like now. They're sitting in the kitchen, side-by-side. Just sitting. It's after curfew, and HQ is quiet with just the permanent inhabitants around, nobody passing through, waiting to get out and over the border. Both entrances are already being watched, and Serk is on comms. room duty. Dan's spent the afternoon tinkering with Archie's electronics, but right now he's stalled, because he doesn't have the right rating of cable, and the soonest his contact can get any is tomorrow morning.

He isn't used to having nothing to do. Neither of them are. Adrian reaches out to pick up a newssheet he's read twice already, turns it over, places it back down. Dan moves his hand so they're touching, just little fingers, and Adrian looks sideways at him with a rueful smile.

"Forgive me," he says. "I'm a little restless."

Dan strokes the back of his hand absently, tracing delicate bones and blue veins. "Me, too," he says. "But hey. We'll wonder what we were complaining about once things get moving again."

Adrian's gracious enough not to point out the platitude. Instead he just turns his hand palm-up, lets Dan's fingers explore it like he's telling fortunes. Dan occasionally wonders what it would be like to know the future, what's going to happen to them and where they're going to end up, whether it would make things easier. It seems appealing right now, sure, when they live with uncertainty every day -- but that's most likely false. It would probably get unbearable, eventually; drive him crazy in the end.

"Serk?" Judith calls, out in the corridor. "I'm making coffee. You want some?" There's an indistinct reply, and she shoulders the kitchen door open, both hands occupied with mugs. "You guys?"

Dan shakes his head, and she shrugs and flicks the kettle on. Then she leans over to the cassette player that's in the corner of the work surface -- a recent development, one Judith freely admits to using to block out the silence -- and presses play. It's a child's toy, small and plastic, with big red buttons and a Fisher-Price logo above the tape slot. The sound is so tinny it takes Dan moments to recognize the song, the whine of synth and the flat, breathy vocals.

"Heroes," by David Bowie. It's so inappropriate he almost laughs. Then he glances at Adrian out of the corner of his eye, and is surprised to see the corners of his mouth curl up, nearly enough to make a smile.

Then there are footsteps in the corridor, and a voice downstairs yells, "Judith! Guys! Can you get down here?"

Judith snaps off the tape recorder with an abrupt click, and then she's out of the door, lips pressed together in concern. Dan's on his feet, following her, in seconds. He doesn't need to look to know that Adrian will be right behind him.

* * *

There are three of them. Refugees, the last remnants of a group in New York. Two women in their early-twenties, who could be sisters or lovers from the way they huddle close together, and who don't say much, and a graying, cadaverous guy around fifty, who introduces himself as Howard and who seems to have ended up spokesman by virtue of the others' silence.

They were, he explains, involved with one of the underground presses in New York, seeking out and disseminating information about Party activities -- what happens in its detention centres, what's really going on in its ranks behind the carefully whitewashed news-reports -- via weekly newssheets and the occasional pamphlet. They're all that remains of their group, now.

"We were lucky, I guess," Howard says. "I was out picking up printing supplies, and Georgina and Steph here--" He gestures towards the two women. "--were... Well. Doing research."

Judith raises an eyebrow. "I'm guessing they weren't in the NYPL."

"You guess right." Howard says, and he squeezes out a grim smile but it doesn't reach his eyes. Dan's seen that look dozens of times, since he started working against the Party. Plenty of people use gallows humor to cope, but it doesn't always work. Some things are just too raw, too painful. "Anyway. By the time I got back to our offices, the place was crawling with Patrolmen. They'd arrested everyone in the building. All our equipment, all our files, everything -- gone. It wasn't safe to stick around, so I headed downtown. We knew a couple of sympathizers in the area, people who'd be willing to hide us if things got tough. Luckily enough these two had had the same idea."

"So why not stay there?" Judith asks them. "You had a place to stay. Traveling out of the city's risky."

"We figured out quickly enough that we were wanted," Howard says. "Someone talked. Guess the Party wants to tie up any loose ends."

Judith frowns, and Dan feels a twinge of unease. It makes sense -- the Patrols like to be seen to be thorough -- but the guarded tone of Howard's voice and the women's silence make him wonder if there isn't something else, something this guy isn't telling them.

Not that that necessarily means they can't be trusted. Sometimes telling the truth doesn't make the people you tell it to any safer. And besides, the fear emanating from these people is a real, familiar one, the same one they all live with, constant and inexorable, tightening its hold with every passing day.

"I'm sorry," Judith says, and her voice is tight and regretful. "I don't know how much you've heard about what's happening over the border, but as far as we know -- well, even the safe houses aren't safe anymore. Border controls are tightening up, too. We can't get you to Canada."

Howard looks down at the floor, but when he speaks his voice is level and he doesn't sound surprised, or disappointed, really. Just tired. "Yeah," he says. "We knew that much. But we've been in touch with a group in Europe, sort of an extension of the underground railroad you have going on here. There's one in England, that we know of, and one in France. They have safe-houses set up, outside the major cities. They'll hide us, if we can just get there. We heard someone in the city had an airship, that they might be willing to help us."

Judith bites her lip. Dan's mind races -- it's pretty far, and he'd need a day or so to be sure Archie's up to the journey, but they could make it.

"If you know anything-- if you know anyone-- _please_."

Judith is turning towards Dan with a pained and doubtful expression, and he's about to open his mouth to volunteer anyway, when a voice beside him says, "We'll do our best to help you. Won't we?"

Adrian hasn't been saying much, just watching the whole exchange quietly and carefully, and Dan's surprised to hear him speak. Not so long ago, he'd have been indignant at hearing Adrian just cut in like that, but Adrian's voice is gentle and questioning, not commanding, and Judith doesn't exactly look delighted, but she nods agreement, and Dan finds himself feeling sort of pleased. He's not quite sure whether it's because he agrees -- because they have to help, it's what they do, they can't _not_ \-- or because it's a little sign that Adrian recognizes what they do here matters, that he can still help to do good.

"Yeah," Dan agrees. "I can be ready the day after tomorrow. That okay with you guys?"

Howard's shoulders sag with relief, and shorter of the two women -- Steph, he thinks -- takes a step forward, regarding Dan with dark and earnest eyes.

"Thank you," she says.


	9. Chapter 9

July 1992

"You think we can trust them?" Dan shifts uncomfortably on Adrian's bed, folds his legs one way and then the other, trying not to crumple the pristine sheets. It's only the second time he's been in the apartment, and he wouldn't be here now if Judith hadn't insisted they both take the night off to get some sleep, away from HQ. 

There was something soft and meaningful in her eyes that made Adrian blink and look away, and it's making it hard for Dan not to think about the fact that this could be the last night they get to spend together. That's nothing new, he tries telling himself: the same is true of every night, with the way things are now, and besides, they're flying across the Atlantic tomorrow night. Getting a decent few hours' rest is just good sense. Doesn't have to be anything more than that.

"I don't know whether we _can_ trust them," Adrian says, thoughtfully. "I think we _should_. Even if they aren't telling the whole truth, that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't on our side." He pauses, glances down. "Of course, you'd be forgiven for questioning my judgement on that score."

Dan reaches over and takes his hand. "You thought the world could be trusted."

Adrian nods mutely, still not looking up.

"That's not a bad thing," Dan tells him. "Yeah, okay, you thought people would want peace, after-- after what happened. You thought they'd be willing to work together. Cooperate. And it didn't exactly work out that way. But that doesn't mean you were wrong, not really. Yeah, some people will do anything for power, and most people can act pretty shittily when they're scared. And maybe you underestimated that. But that doesn't mean they _don't want_ peace. It doesn't mean they're not _good_ , when it comes down to it." Adrian glances up at him, warily. Dan squeezes his hand. "I think you still believe that. That's why I-- well, that's one of the things I _like_ about you."

He's rewarded with a tiny smile, just the briefest little quirk of Adrian's lips, but then Adrian's expression turns serious again immediately. "It isn't too late," he says. "We _could_ call the trip off."

"No way. Those people _need_ our help. They're relying on us."

"Dan-- " Adrian breaks off, blinks, swallows dryly. "We both know the risks. And I'm prepared to deal with them. But if you're going to risk _your_ safety -- don't do it on my say-so. Please."

"I'm not." 

"I mean it, Dan. What happens to me hardly matters, but if you were to--"

"Adrian." Dan looks at him sternly. "Stop it. First of all, what happens to you _does_ matter. It matters to me. You know that already, and you're not going to change it, so there's no point arguing with me. And second of all, I know you. I'm not as easy to manipulate as I used to be, and I'm not doing this just because you suggested it. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. You know that as well as I do. You wouldn't have suggested it otherwise. Like I've tried to tell you God knows how many times, you're _good_."

He's fully expecting Adrian to disagree with him, or just give him one of those sad little looks that mean he thinks Dan's just being too kind but isn't feeling inclined to argue, and change the subject. But instead the smile reappears, small and wistful, and Adrian just says, "Perhaps I've absorbed a little goodness from being near you."

Dan smiles back, shakes his head and just shuffles closer to Adrian, slipping an arm around his waist to hug him close. 

They can't deny the risks they'll be taking tomorrow, but they can't change them, either. That's just the way things are. All they can do until morning is be in the moment, and hope for the best. Right now all Dan wants to do is reassure Adrian, make him see that Dan's here, with him, because that's what he wants, and that he isn't going anywhere if he has the choice. They're in this together.

Adrian turns his head. He pauses, lips not quite touching Dan's, like he's waiting for permission, for long seconds before leaning in and kissing him. Dan kisses him back, just softly, and his eyelids flutter closed. Their kisses are slow; tentative. It's still unusual for Adrian to initiate contact -- like he's afraid, always, that Dan will change his mind, just turn away and leave him -- and even now there is something halting and hesitant in the way his fingers pluck at the fabric of Dan's shirt, and Dan can _feel_ that he's not relaxed, that he's still tight-wound and on-edge.

Gently, Dan breaks the kiss and pulls back, just enough to be able to look Adrian in the face. 

Adrian draws in breath, short and sharp, a little gasp of wordless protest, and his eyes flicker open. He looks back at Dan uncertainly. "Is something-- ?"

"Nothing's wrong," Dan assures him, immediately. "Not with me, anyway. It's just that you seem a little-- I don't know. Nervous?" 

It sounds ridiculous as soon as he thinks about it (because Adrian's used to speaking to presidents and prime ministers and appearing on national TV, so why on Earth would he be nervous around the guy he's spent the last month-and-a-half sharing a bed with?) but Adrian doesn't laugh at him. He just breathes in slowly and squeezes his eyes shut for a half-second, as though they're hurting him. 

"Dan." Adrian's tone isn't quite steady. He pauses; tries again. "Dan, I-- I just-- " His voice falters, and Dan realises that he's lost for words, _Adrian_ is lost for words, and it hurts, right inside his chest, insistent and aching. "I don't know how."

"How to do what?" Dan asks, reaching up to touch his cheek. "Adrian. You can tell me. It's okay."

But Adrian just gives him this pleading look -- and Dan is never going to get used to seeing him like, this, not ever, and it makes him astonished and desperately sad all at once -- and turns his head, so that his lips brush Dan's fingers and the curve of his neck is exposed, pale in the dim apartment. His hand slips underneath the bottom of Dan's shirt, fingers fluttering where waistband meets skin, diffident, questioning. His eyes are very wide and unsure.

Dan gets it, then, what he's asking. Or what he _can't_ ask, more to the point, and why.

The question hasn't really come up, not since that first awful moment with the almost-blowjob, when Adrian seemed so lost and distant, and relief was so evident in every line of his body when Dan stopped him. And Dan's been fine with that. Not that the thought hasn't occurred to him, not that he hasn't _wondered_ , or had the occasional, deeply frustrating dream, but everything between them has been about tenderness, comfort, just having someone there to hold on to, all gentle kisses and gentler touches and falling asleep wrapped round each other in Dan's cramped little bunk. A refuge from the harshness of the world, the lives they see falling apart in mundane little ways all around them. Sex just hasn't seemed like a part of that before now.

And it's unexpected, but not totally surprising, not when he thinks about it. Perhaps it's just part of that reassurance, that physical comfort. Because what if tonight _is_ the last one they get to spend together, what if something _does_ happen to one, or both, of them? What if they never even get the _option_ again? (And then the last person Adrian allowed that close to him would be Morgan, who only cared about making him feel used and humiliated-- but Dan can't even bear to contemplate that idea, he shoves the thought away, because that bastard has no place in their bed, and just focuses on Adrian instead.)

"What do you need?" he asks, softly, and then realizes that it's the wrong question. It's been difficult enough to persuade Adrian to _accept_ affection. Forget getting him to admit that he needs it, or even wants it. Half the time he still acts like Dan's kisses are over-generous gifts, like he doesn't deserve anything that's just for his own pleasure or comfort.

But Dan has to know that this time it doesn't feel like obligation, it's not some attempt at payback or tangled up with some ridiculous notion about doing the right thing. 

So he just leans in close, nuzzling Adrian's neck and then placing a tiny kiss on the delicate skin. "Are you sure about this?" he asks. "Because-- I am. I want _you_. I do. But after the last time--"

"Dan--"

"I just need to know you're _choosing_ to do this. And that you know you can decide not to. If you want."

Adrian's voice is very quiet. "I'm not sure I can."

Dan turns to look at him, frowning, a knot of concern forming in his stomach. "What do you mean?"

"I-- " Softer still, as though he's ashamed to let the words out. "Dan-- I-- need you."

His eyes flicker downwards, and Dan almost _gapes_ , the confession is so much more than he's been expecting. And how much must it have cost Adrian, to just come out and admit it? He's probably never said that to anyone before in his life.

Dan snaps back to himself then, mindful of that fact, and just wraps his arms around Adrian a little more tightly. "You already have me. But you know what I mean. I don't want you to feel like that again. Not ever, if I can help it." And fuck, he must sound like an idiot, it's _Adrian_ he's talking to, but there are more important things than what he sounds like right now. "I don't want to do anything to hurt you."

"I'm quite capable of stopping you, believe me."

"I don't mean physically. And anyway, I know you could. I just don't know if you _would_. I need you to promise. Please."

After a very long few seconds, Adrian just nods and relaxes against him a little, whispering, "Of course."

Dan reaches up gently to turn Adrian's face towards him. Adrian meets his eyes, and there's no uncertainty there now; nothing hidden. 

Adrian kisses him again, then, still softly -- but he is not so hesitant as before, not so unsure, and Dan just smiles and lets it happen. He lets it be all that matters, for now, just the way Adrian is holding onto him and the feeling of his heartbeat, rapid and fragile, and the few hours that are left before dawn. It isn't much, but it's all they have, and right now, it has to be enough.

* * *

So many years admitting of no equal; so long in near-perfect isolation, allowing for physical closeness only as mechanical release or penance, choreographed instances of self-flagellation that had little to do with pleasure, even less with intimacy. And all of it undone so completely in this ragged communion of sweat and breath and half-understood words, in Dan's stubborn refusal to let him fade away, to let memory and guilt swallow him out of the moment.

Dan touches him, and the touch is like nothing to which he has ever been accustomed, because it is neither rough with wanting nor hesitant with the reverence that has long been too predictable even to flatter. Dan's hands and his mouth are shy, at first, but when his caresses grow surer they are still tender, still undemanding. Dan's hands map the ridges of his spine and the hollows of his shoulder blades; Dan kisses him wherever he can -- eyelids, collarbone, the plane of his stomach -- and the kisses are reassurances, promises. _I'm here. I'm with you. I see you_. Adrian feels as though he is being explored, studied. He has been naked before dozens of others, over the years, but never this exposed. 

His heart skitters with fear. He has to force himself not to close his eyes.

And later, when he is on his knees, his back pressed to Dan's chest, and Dan is rocking up into him with tiny, gradual movements -- so frustrating, but so considered and considerate, so careful of causing hurt -- Adrian remembers that he is undeserving, and it is all he can do to keep from weeping. Just allowing this, just having Dan in his bed, feels like fraud. But then Dan's mouth is at his ear, whispering, "Where are you?" in a tone that is as much plea as question, dragging him back into the world.

There are arms around him, then -- steadying, gentling -- and one of Dan's hands travels down his torso, stopping to hover inches from his cock. Adrian remembers that Dan has not done this before, not with another man, this is new and unfamiliar and perhaps even uncomfortable. Dan is doing this for _him_ , and the thought is too much to bear. He opens his mouth to say that it is okay, that they can stop, that in any case he should not have allowed even this, but the only sound that will come out is a cracked little gasp that is not quite a sob and shame rises hot in him. 

But then Dan kisses the back of his shoulder and whispers, "Please?" as though he is asking a favor. Adrian knows, then, that he cannot -- he will never be able to -- deny Dan anything, and so he subsides back against him and nods in assent, somewhere between gratitude and defeat.

He comes shuddering, dizzy and afraid in the knowledge that he has never been this vulnerable before a lover. Dan knows him, _has_ him, in a way none of the starry-eyed admirers he used to take to bed ever did. Knowing the source of his sadness, Dan tries to make him happy anyway. Knowing what he has done, Dan accepts him, cares for him--

Even in his thoughts, Adrian shies from the word _love_. But this must what people mean when they talk about connection, about understanding. This must be what it is to be human.

He has not been human in a long time. Strange; he has hardly felt the loss of himself. It has been buried under the weight of his guilt, and it all comes upon him at once, now, as he is thrust back into being, a phantom limb pain of the heart.

For some time afterwards he is unable to manage words. Dan looks at him with wide, concerned eyes at first, until Adrian reaches out for him with all that he can muster of a smile. Then Dan lets out a breath and just holds him, lightly, like something much-loved and fragile, kissing his forehead and murmuring something that sounds very much like, "It's okay," against his hair.

Part of Adrian's mind immediately starts insisting that this is wrong, that it _should not_ be okay, but somehow he cannot manage to pay attention to it for long. The inside of his head is wide and expansive and whirling, the feeling like that of stepping off a roundabout as a small child. 

And the guilty voices in his head all seem so far away, and he cannot quite tell what they are saying or whether their words even mean anything. There are other things that are louder. The thud of his heartbeat in his ears. The sound of Dan's breathing. The knowledge that they could both be killed, or captured, or separated and stranded, miles apart, if not tomorrow then the next day, or next week or next month. 

The thought suddenly frightens him far more than it has ever done before.

Hope, after all, never exists without fear.


	10. Chapter 10

July 1992

Dan wakes without the insistent bleeping of his alarm clock in his ears, and for a moment he's confused. This isn't his bunk; he's used to something far less comfortable. Then he remembers where he is, and his heart thuds at the absence of another body in bed beside him.

His brain immediately starts running worst-case scenarios. Adrian's going to tell him that last night was a mistake, and he's going to have to pretend to be relieved. Or Adrian's retreated back into his guilt, decided that he can't allow himself this, after all, and he's going to shut himself off and never let Dan get through to him again. Or, worse, it's nothing to do with that at all, and in a second Dan will feel the blankets being pulled off him, he'll be dragged out of bed and into the back of a Patrol van and they'll never see each other again--

Then he opens his eyes and remembers that he's being ridiculous, letting his imagination run wild. Adrian _always_ gets up before he does, and he hasn't gone anywhere. He's just sitting on the edge of the bed, half-dressed and cross-legged, the sunlight that's slanting through the gap between blind and window-frame painting a golden stripe down his side.

There's a cup of tea in his hands, but he isn't drinking it. He's just looking at Dan with this quiet, intent gaze, and an expression that, if not exactly cheerful, is far from unhappy. It turns into a smile when he sees Dan stretch and yawn and pull himself up into a sitting position.

"Good morning," he murmurs.

"Hey." Dan rubs a hand across his eyes and scoots down the bed. "You ok?"

The answer is in the small, contented sigh Adrian lets out as Dan settles beside him, and the way his eyes slip half-closed. He almost seems... peaceful, Dan decides. At ease. Dan could get used to seeing this look more often.

Of course, right now it probably means Adrian's avoiding thinking about what they have to do tonight. That's okay. Dan doesn't particularly want to dwell on it until he has to, either. It's going to be difficult: hundreds of miles over water, and people they barely know waiting on the other side. He just leans into Adrian instead, places a light kiss on his shoulder and then rests his head there.

Adrian turns to look at him through lowered lashes -- a look that, if the idea weren't so laughable, Dan would almost think is _shy_ \-- and a drop of water lands on Dan's nose. Adrian's hair is shower-damp and he smells of soap, and Dan realizes he's probably nowhere near as fragrant himself.

Groaning, he gets to his feet.

"Towels are in the cupboard," Adrian tells him, and he looks as though he'd like to say something else, but then he doesn't.

It's only after Dan's showered and dressed, while he's standing in front of the bedroom mirror trying to persuade his hair into some semblance of tidiness, that Adrian appears behind him. An arm curls round his side as Adrian passes him a cup of tea.

Dan takes a sip and then sets it down on the dresser, turns round, into Adrian's arms, and hugs him. Their lips meet briefly.

"You don't need an excuse," he tells Adrian. "Not ever."

Adrian dips his head forward, so that their foreheads touch. "Forgive me," he says. "I'm sure I must be... difficult to deal with, at times."

"Not for me." Dan's arms tighten instinctively round his waist. "Well, okay, maybe sometimes. But that doesn't matter. I don't care how difficult it is. I-- like you anyway. I'd just like to see you happy, that's all."

"Dan." Adrian meets his eyes, and suddenly there's something deeply serious in the look. "You make me happier than I have any right to be. And-- I'm glad. I don't want to lose you." Then he blinks, and looks surprised by his own words.

Dan's taken aback, too, but then he can't help grinning. Because that's the most hopeful thing he's heard Adrian say in-- well, since he showed up at HQ back in February. It's like he's not running away from it any more.

"You won't," Dan promises, and kisses him again.

It's Adrian who breaks the kiss. "We really _should_ be getting back," he says, regretfully.

Dan glances at the clock. "Oh. Yeah. Shit." 

He gulps down his tea, finishes dragging a comb through his hair, and as he's shoving on his glasses he catches Adrian looking at him in the mirror. And fuck, this is almost _normal_ , they just look like a couple getting ready for work, and for a moment he finds himself wondering what that would be like, how they would be if this were all over. If they got to wake up somewhere peaceful together every morning, if they had time to just be. 

Then he catches himself, because there's no point starting on that track. Things aren't normal, it isn't all over, and that way madness lies.

But he reaches for Adrian's hand again before they step through the door, and doesn't let go until he has to.

* * *

It is mid-afternoon when the message from Terumi arrives. HQ has been running low on first aid materials, but the hospital has just had a delivery, and she has managed to order a few extra supplies undetected. Her contact is on his way to the maildrop right now. With any luck, they should be able to collect the delivery in an hour or so.

This is good. It means they'll be able to take some basic medical supplies on the trip with them, and still leave enough behind for HQ to be able to cope in an emergency. Judith sighs with relief when the communication crackles through, and then looks sideways at Adrian.

"You usually deal with these guys," she says. "They know you. Think you can get there and back before curfew?"

"Of course," he reassures her. glancing at the clock. "It's half an hour away, maybe a little more. Barring any accidents, I should have plenty of time."

But when he arrives at the offices of the maildrop company, the stout young woman behind the desk eyes him with surprise, and then shakes her head.

"Nothing here, I'm afraid."

Adrian raises an eyebrow, and then frowns, disguising his consternation as the annoyance of one who has been mildly inconvenienced. "I suppose nobody has left a message?"

The woman shrugs dumbly, and he allows himself a small, irritated sigh. 

"Then perhaps I could use the telephone?"

"Go ahead." She jerks her head towards the rear of the office.

He dials the number of Massachusetts General from memory, and is unsurprised when a clipped voice on the other end of the line informs him that Doctor Yamada is no longer employed by the hospital and that she has, regrettably, left no further contact details.

Adrian keeps his tone unconcerned as he thanks the receptionist for her trouble, but his mind is racing. It's clear that Terumi has been compromised. Arrested. ( _Your fault_ , shriek the voices in the back of his mind, shrill as gulls swooping on prey -- but then he remembers that dwelling on his own culpability will change nothing, and forces himself to ignore them). Perhaps the contact was a plant, or has been intercepted en route. Either way, the Patrols will arrive before long.

A glance out of the side window confirms it. There is a surveillance van parked across the road, in full view of the office building. No doubt they saw him enter, and if he's seen leaving, he will be traced back to HQ. 

And _that_ is not an option.

Quickly, Adrian runs through his mental map of the building. The offices of the maildrop company open onto a sixth-floor corridor. There is a fire-escape at one end of it; it's possible that that might furnish an exit route invisible from the main road.

"I should take the rest of the afternoon off, if I were you," he remarks, casually, to the receptionist as he leaves the office. A clearer warning might be picked up, if the office has been bugged; would incriminate the people who work here, who have been handling contraband unawares. He hopes it will be enough.

A quick glance down the corridor to ensure that no-one is watching, and then he is at the fire door. The alarm is easy enough to disable. Adrian lets himself out onto the fire escape, surveys the back-street onto which it leads.

His heart sinks when he sees the Patrol van pull up at the end of the alley. 

It simply stops -- a predator lying in wait -- but it is enough to close off that escape-route. The whole of the alley is most likely clearly visible to anyone inside the van. And even if he were able to escape, they will, no doubt, be viewing footage all around the building even now. Their technology is capable of relaying the images to Patrols all over the city in seconds. (Adrian should know. His company designed it. And he is surprised, momentarily, when the thought raises fury in him as much as guilt -- but there is no time for that now.) He would be followed; there is no doubt of that.

He is near the top of the building; there are two stories above him. The surveillance cameras are fastened to the walls halfway down. They don't look _up_ \--

And then there is a tangled wail of sirens, and the Patrol van opens its doors to disgorge a rush of black-clad figures, and he has no time to think about it further.

The gap between the top of the fire escape on the roof is considerable, but he makes it, and is up and over the edge before the Patrolmen reach the top floor, blood racing in his ears. There are voices in the corridor; Adrian hears them through the steel doors.

"Cameras definitely picked up _someone_ entering the building. Picture's not clear, though. Could be our man."

"There's a fire escape. Leads down into the alley."

"We've got guys out there."

"How about the roof?"

"Nah. You'd have to be some kind of gymnast to get up there. Search the rest of the building. Let's go."

The footsteps retreat. Long moments pass before Adrian can be certain that they have left the corridor; before he can allow himself to breathe normally.

His view of the main road is obscured. He does not see the girl from the maildrop office leave; he will never know whether she has walked out by herself, or been hauled out by the patrols. He will simply have to hope that he has managed to prevent one innocent party from being caught up in this today.

When it feels safe to move again, Adrian glances at his watch. An hour has passed since he left HQ. He will be missed soon. They should be preparing for tonight's voyage -- and Dan will be worried.

The thought of causing him distress is mildly sickening, and Adrian's fingers itch to flick on the radio device he's carrying with him, just to let Dan know that he's safe. But using it while the building is still being searched would be an idiot risk. He has to wait.

So he does. Adrian waits while booted footsteps swarm up the building, and then die away; while two of the Patrol vans parked at ground level readmit their passengers and pull off, leaving two more to keep watch; while the minute hand of his watch edges closer to curfew. Every minute is an agony of impatience.

(The sensation is new and unpleasant, and Adrian finds himself feeling childishly indignant in the face of time. He is still unaccustomed to worry, as it relates to individuals. He has never _cared_ so much for the feelings of another before.)

It is safe, he decides, at last. He switches on the devices, and it crackles awake.

"Hello?"

The voice is Dan's. Even in the urgency of the moment, Adrian feels something pure and hot and bright spark in him at the sound. "Dan."

"Adrian." His name is a relieved sigh. "Where are you? I was starting to worry."

"There _has_ been something of an incident. No supplies."

"Shit. What's happened? _Shit_. Are you-- ?"

"I'm fine," Adrian reassures, at once. "And in no immediate danger."

"But?"

"The building is still being watched. I'm afraid there's no way I'm getting away from here in daylight."

"Oh." Over the radio, Adrian hears Dan swallow. And he can imagine the pained, worried look in Dan's eyes, knows that Dan will be taking off his glasses and turning them over in his hands, rubbing a palm across his eyes. "Oh, fuck. It's fucking _July_. It's not gonna be dark before curfew. You won't have time to get back here before we have to--" 

"There's time to call the trip off," Adrian suggests. "Postpone it. You shouldn't fly alone."

"I know. But if we wait until later tonight, it'll start getting light before we can land the other side. And-- well, those people are in a panic. I walked in on one of the girls crying in the kitchen earlier. You really think we can afford to keep them here any longer? If the Party wants to find them that badly, it won't be long before they trace them to us."

Adrian closes his eyes, and lets out a sigh. It's a good point. Sensible.

"Rich has some piloting experience," Dan goes on. "Nothing like Archie, but it's something. I'm sure he'd be willing to come. I'll speak to the others, see what they think. Hang on."

There is an indistinct flurry of speech in the background, and Adrian considers Dan's suggestion. Richard joined them shortly before Maria's disappearance. He seems reliable; solid. But still, the notion of allowing Dan to set off across the ocean without Adrian beside him -- to help, or simply to share the danger -- is a terrifying one.

But it seems inevitable, too. The acceptance of it has settled hollowly in his chest before Dan's voice distinguishes itself from the hubbub again. 

"I'm going," he says, sounding resigned and determined. "Take care coming back, okay?"

"I _can_ go unnoticed when I need to." Adrian manages to keep the tremor out of his voice. Then he allows his tone to soften a fraction. "It's you I'm worried about."

"Don't be. Twenty-four hours. That's all it should take. It isn't long."

"I'll hold you to that."

"Do. And Adrian-- "

"Yes?"

"I-- I. I'll see you soon, okay?"

Adrian notices the break in Dan's voice, and his pulse flutters. He does not know what Dan was going to say, but the brief pause ignites all kinds of things-- hope and elation and fear-- 

He shuts them down, silently scolding himself. Now is not the time.

"Soon," he agrees.

 

_ January 1992 _

_The telephone rings once, and the voice that answers it is unfamiliar. Yes, this is Senator Blackman's office, it informs Adrian, but she is regrettably unavailable at the moment. Even to him._

_"It's quite urgent," he says, allowing an edge of displeasure to bleed into his words._

_The voice remains firm. Unavailable._

_The click of the receiver is quiet and final. And Adrian knows, then._

_He has been trying to work through legitimate channels. There are others who sympathize, and Rose Blackman was one of them. They have been in communication, under the Party's radar, for some months. A viable alternative to the Party. That is --_ was _\-- the goal._

_It appears they have been betrayed. It hardly matter by whom. The Party has taken Rose Blackman, and they will come for him next. And they will come._

_A knock on the door in the night, or a bullet from behind, one that will be too unexpected for him to catch and that the press will blame on some long-held criminal grudge._

_He has no choice now. None but flight. He might have days, but no longer._

_Very late that night, Adrian stands high above the glitter of New York, and looks down. The city is subdued, now, after the introduction of curfews, but there is still light pollution enough that the stars are indistinct, things viewed through mist or old glass. The streets still follow the same patterns they have always done -- and, God knows, he has surveyed them like this on enough occasions._

_Atop a building, arms folded -- a hero's stance, a protector's._

_The thought sickens Adrian as it occurs. He shivers, and leaves._

_Leafing through papers and newssheets, considering routes, Adrian toys with the idea of not running at all. He could simply wait, allow them to take him, suffer the worst excesses of whatever it is he has helped into this world. Considered from one angle, it seems only fair._

_And then a word snags his gaze. The backs of some newssheets -- those from the more closely-guarded channels -- contain the bare bones of contact details. Pseudonyms; oblique clues. This one suggests a resistance group, somewhere in Boston. The short line of text simply instructs the needy to ask for 'Hollis.'_

_It could be nothing. But--_

_Adrian does not feel the lessening of his despair, not then. It does not occur to him to wonder whether there is not, after all, still goodness in the world._

_(He does not allow it to occur. He does not dare_ hope _.)_

_But he comes to a decision._

__  
July 1992

The radio hisses, flat and unrelenting, and makes no other sound. Adrian's eyes are dry and sore, and there is a small, insistent throb of pain behind them. 

The door to the communications room opens, and Judith steps halfway through the gap.

"I'm sending Serk down to join you," she informs him. "You can go get some rest, if you like." 

Adrian forces a smile. "Thank you," he says. 

He does not move, however, and after a moment Judith shrugs and retreats into the corridor, the door clicking shut behind her. She is tactful enough not to press the matter, or to ask how he is.

Forty-nine hours have passed since Dan left. He has not returned.


	11. Chapter 11

July 1992

Adrian sleeps, eventually, when the corners of his vision begin to darken and crawl and the throb of pain behind his eyes becomes a stab. 

Instinctively, he lets himself into Dan's little room first; but the pillows still smell of Dan's hair, and Dan's spare glasses stare accusingly at him from the windowsill, so instead he finds an empty bunk to stretch out on and allows unconsciousness to claim him. He does not dream; or if he does, he remembers nothing when he wakes. For this, he is grateful. 

Now that it has happened, it seems both unfair and utterly inevitable that he is still here, relatively safe, and Dan perhaps lost, he knows not where. And the guilty voices that he has been learning to ignore grow incrementally louder, saying that this is poetic justice; that it was foolish to hope for comfort where there could never be redemption; that if he had not begun to do so, perhaps Dan would not have been taken from him, perhaps he would still be here...

He is aware that the idea is ridiculous. The world does not work that way; he, of all people, should know that. But, in the indistinct moments before sleep, it is difficult to ignore.

It is mid-afternoon when Adrian wakes, and sunny. The bunkroom looks bright and flat, and the inside of his chest feels hollow. He would not be surprised if, on stopping and listening, he were to find that he no longer has a pulse.

He showers, dresses, drinks coffee, even remembers to eat something, though he barely notices what it is. Judith walks into the kitchen while he is sitting at the table. She blinks in faint surprise, and a moment later sits down beside him and wordlessly places a hand on his arm. A gesture of reassurance; he is not accustomed to being on the receiving end. (Because nobody had thought to comfort him since childhood, not until _Dan_ \-- and the thought is a painful one but it is a thin and disjointed kind of pain, like the sound of far-off screaming.)

Judith's eyes are lowered and sad. Of course; Dan had been working with these people for months before Adrian arrived. It is not only to him that Dan is important. His guilt may be a private thing, but this grief-- but no, he will not allow it to be grief yet; this _worry_ \-- is not. For a moment, he feels something close to shame at having forgotten.

"We haven't heard anything," Judith says, into the silence. "But-- well. If he's able to get back here, he'll be back."

"I know." The level, reassuring tone comes automatically. Adrian can't decide whether or not to be glad of that. "If there's one thing Dan isn't, it's disloyal."

"Yeah." She hesitates a second, then continues. "You know that better than any of us, I guess."

Adrian smiles, though he knows that it must be a weak, thin thing. "I suppose I do."

"I mean it." Judith swallows, and does not mention the other possibility: that Dan will not be able to return; that he will never come back. Briefly, she looks as though she is considering saying something else, but then she shakes herself. "Sorry. There's a supply run to make. I should go get ready."

"No." Adrian places his free hand over hers, and squeezes it gently. "I'll go. You look tired; you should rest while you have the chance."

And, out in the bright air, he begins to feel... not better, exactly, not less afraid, or less aware of this loss, but less consumed by it, less emptied-out and insubstantial. He tells himself that Dan would not have him sit indoors, growing pale and tense with worry, tries to imagine the disappointed look in Dan's eyes, if he were to return and find Adrian suffocating in guilt and sorrow once again.

Dan may still return. Adrian will not allow himself to think otherwise. Strange: for years, he has thought of hope as foolishness, or at least as something reserved for those without such bloodied hands. Now, he finds himself clinging to it stubbornly, as though it were a handhold in wreckage.

Adrian reins in his thoughts, then, focuses them on the task at hand. This is the only thing to do, after all. It is what Dan, and Judith and Serk and Maria, and even he, have been doing for months now. There is nothing else. He carries on.

* * *

Dan's exhausted by the time they arrive at the rendezvous point north of London, and the offer of a square meal and few hours' sleep sounds like heaven. The two women have stayed silent, for the most part, through the flight. Howard has talked, on and off, in a thin, nervous voice that's gotten steadier by degrees as they've flown east. 

They've made good time -- no trouble, though if Dan's honest he _has_ felt a little tense with an inexperienced new guy at his side instead of Adrian -- and they'll have time to rest up without being late back to HQ. 

Of course, it's over dinner that Scott, one of the unofficial leaders of the British group, mentions that Howard, Georgina and Steph will have to wait days for transport to their final destination. There are a few other people waiting at this halfway-house, too, but their drivers are both tied up with jobs in other areas of the country right now. They can't get back as quickly as they used to, either. The British government's been clamping down on travel from the US in recent months, and not _all_ of the groups helping out refugees have managed to go unnoticed. They have to stay away from the main roads when they can, and travel when traffic is sparse.

The spot to which they're headed is out west, somewhere in Wales. It's remote; the kind of place where people keep to themselves, for the most part, where the police are unlikely to get many answers from the locals. There's a decent-sized community hiding out there, with their own buildings, facilities. Self-sufficient, for the most part, and almost entirely made up of fugitives fleeing the Party, or one of the other more or less repressive regimes that sprung up in the aftermath of '85. Kind of a refugee camp, really.

Scott says this with an apologetic half-shrug, but the description reminds Dan of something Laurie mentioned, almost a year ago now, the last time he spoke to her. But he damps down the spark of hope and curiosity that the thought ignites in him, because there must be dozens of places like that, all over the country, and he doesn't even know if she ever made it there, anyway, and he has enough to worry about back at HQ without setting himself up for a disappointment here, too.

Still, it _is_ practically on his way back. It would be unkind not to offer.

So that's how he winds up trying to land Archie on a too-small-for-comfort plateau halfway up a mountain, with a full load of passengers and Scott calling out directions from behind him, in an unseasonably strong wind and hammering rain. Visibility's as good as non-existent. He can just about make out the small group of people from the camp -- _village_ , Scott insists -- waiting for them, a couple hundred yards away, dark and indistinct against the scrub. 

As they dip in towards the uneven hillside, a figure darts off from the small group. Then another. The first, slightly smaller, figure makes towards them at a brisk walk, breaks into a skidding run. The other one follows. Dan squints at them in surprise as he brings Archie down, but he can't see much through the rain.

And the moment's distraction is all it takes. 

The wind is violent, the ground wet and stony, and as Dan makes the landing he hears a painful, metallic crunch. Several dials on the control panel go insane.

"Fuck," he says, more to himself than anybody else. " _Fuck_. Guys, wait here." He kills the engines, and is out through the side door in a heartbeat, holding his glasses on, heedless of the rain, the people hurrying towards them instantly forgotten.

It's the fuel tank. He's screwed up the landing -- misjudged the distance from the rocky outcrop behind them -- and the wall of it is breached. Not badly enough to endanger any of Archie's other inner workings, but enough that he's losing gas.

Dan's heart sinks. There's no way he can assess the damage further out here, not without getting everything else waterlogged. They're a couple of miles outside the village. He hopes to hell that there's somewhere over there he'll be able to work.

Then his attention's distracted again, because someone is yelling through the wind and the rain, and the words are whipped-around and twisted but they sound a whole lot like--

"Dan!" 

He turns round. The first figure is closer now, but still running, sure-footed even on the mud and slippery rock. The second one, more careful, lags behind. 

And then Dan pushes his rain-flecked goggles up off his eyes and gapes in amazement.

Laurie is outfitted in something bulky and waterproof, and her hair is sodden and pulled back off of her face. But her eyes are sparking, and she barrels towards him and wraps her arms around him with fierce delight.

" _Dan_." She grins. "You're _alive_."

* * *

Laurie loops her arm easily through Dan's and leads him up towards the group now approaching Archie. The confidence of the gesture startles him. He's gotten used to the way Adrian's hands hesitate over his skin, always questioning, asking permission every time, and he feels a faint pang deep in his chest, because he's late already, and he's going to be later, and he just knows that Adrian will be sitting up, stressed out and doing his very best impression of fine, and blaming himself for whatever he thinks has gone wrong. 

But Dan has people other than himself to get to safety right now, so he tells himself he'll just have to worry about that later. They get everyone else out, and Dan secures Archie as best he can before they start the rain-sodden tramp up to what Laurie calls the Village. He's fixing the final fastening on the tarpaulin when he feels a light touch on his left shoulder.

"Laurie?" he says, automatically, looking round, then breaks off, because it isn't her. It's one of the women from New York, Georgina, and she's just kind of... standing there. "Uh. Can I help you?"

She's barely spoken a word to him -- or anyone -- since arriving at HQ, except for the occasional "Excuse me" or "Thank you," and if Dan's honest, she's kind of started to spook him. But now she just looks at him, bright-eyed.

"There's no more Big Brother," she says. Her voice is very quiet, and the words are almost swallowed by the wind. "Soon." Then she smiles.

Dan blinks, unsure whether he's heard her correctly. "I don't--"

But she's already turning and walking away, and then Laurie's back by his side, cheerfully asking him to please hurry the fuck up because she actually isn't out here getting soaked to the skin for fun, you know.

As they walk, she introduces the guy who hurried down with her as Gareth, and a few others whose names Dan instantly forgets, but she sounds more interested in finding out how he ended up there. He gives her the edited highlights, omitting any mention of Adrian's name for now. He hates the idea of being dishonest with Laurie, of all people, but he's selfishly glad to have found her out here safe and-- well, he wants to hold on to that for a moment. Besides, he figures this probably isn't quite the right time for a long and involved discussion about the rights and wrongs of fraternizing with the (former) enemy.

So he tells her about HQ, instead, about Judith and Serk and Maria, and the clampdowns by the Party and the weird creepiness of the latest bunch of refugees, and Laurie's lips go thin for a moment at that, but if she's worried she doesn't voice it. And he asks her about the Village (more like a farm or a co-op, really, independent and self-sufficient, and there's a bright note of pride in her voice when she talks about it), and how she's been (exhausted, mostly, but they're safe here and it's better than looking over her shoulder every minute), and what she's doing now (helping out with food production -- everyone does -- and teaching self-defense to the adults and basic karate to keep the kids entertained).

(There are _kids_ here. Hiding from the Party, or its sympathizer governments, with their parents. Obvious, now that Dan thinks about it, but _fuck_.)

He also asks her about the likelihood of getting the parts he'll need to repair Archie -- probably, but it might take a while -- and of being able to get through to HQ. That's more difficult. They don't have much in the way of radio comms. here; all they're doing, really, is hiding, so they try to keep off the radar as much as possible. They have phone lines, but they're not working right now. Not all of the locals are too happy about the existence of the Village, and the wires have been damaged for the second time in as many weeks. Laurie's pretty sure it isn't an accident. 

Dan's insides tighten when he hears that news. They're late now, the guys back at HQ are going to be worried, and of course Adrian will start blaming it all on himself if he thinks something's gone wrong. 

And with a sudden, lurching feeling that's something like homesickness, all he wants is to be back there, by Adrian's side, just to take his hand squeeze it and talk some sense into him, let him know that everything's okay. Not being able to do that feels like suffocating, and for a moment Dan feels sure his distress must be showing on his face, but if Laurie notices she doesn't mention it.

She just takes him back to the Village, where he's given a spare bunk and several cups of hot coffee, for which he's desperately grateful, and Gareth lends him some dry clothes. The shirt's a little too long in the sleeves, and he sits tugging at them uncomfortably until Laurie sticks her heard round the bunkroom door.

"C'mon," she instructs him. "There are some people you need to see."

The building she takes him to is, officially, the dining hall, but it seems to be populated regardless of the time of day, and apparently functions as a social space in the evenings, too. Right now, it's around half full, and the battered old stereo in the corner is playing something bright and synth-y at a volume that leaves the words just inaudible. Laurie introduces Dan to a guy called Rhys, who thinks his contact in the nearest town should be able to get hold of some spare parts, and then Dan hears a cracked, lusty laugh rising out of the hubbub, and he looks back at Laurie, blinking. She rolls her eyes, somewhere between pride and embarrassment, and jerks her head in the direction of the far corner.

Sally is drinking something dark, unidentifiable and almost certainly alcoholic out of a tall glass, defiantly red-lipped and with a slightly terrified-looking younger man seated on either side of her. She smiles widely when she catches sight of Dan, then leans over to tell the guy on her left to move up, and beckons him over.

He's still sitting there an hour later, jammed between bench, table, and Sally's sharp-voiced complaints about how the locals really don't know how to make a decent drink. The music has been turned up a notch, and the temperature of the place has risen. Laurie extricates herself from their table to go find a light, and as she stands up, Gareth catches her round the waist with an arm, leaning in to offer his Zippo. And Laurie's eyes spark at the same time as the lighter, and she smiles and tips her head forward as she inhales, says something to him in a low, private voice.

That's when Dan realizes. They're together. She's moved on.

He hadn't really considered the possibility that she's have found someone else, too, and he's kind of surprised that he isn't even a little jealous. If anything, he's happy for her. It's simple. Almost seems too easy.

But Laurie deserves someone who'll stay with her, someone she can build a life with, who wants the same things she does. Dan's pretty sure she's not just staying here because she has too, now. She really seems to _like_ it. And, looking around, he can see why. It's bright and homey and safe, and there's a sense of camaraderie in the way people just help each other out with no fuss.

A movement in the corner of Dan's eye catches his gaze, and he sees Sally turn her head, following his line of vision. She looks at him sympathetically.

"Make yourself useful, hon," she says, but her voice is gentle. "Fetch me another drink."

She's got the wrong idea, of course, but Dan can't help feeling glad anyway. He gives her what he hopes is a grateful smile, and does as he's told.

They turn in late that night, but he's up at the first light of dawn anyway, part jet-lag, part anxiety, and partly the now-unfamiliar feeling of sleeping alone. But there's nothing he can do except wait right now, so that's what he does.

Of course, he doesn't just sit there doing nothing. He helps out in the Village, as much as they'll allow him to, he checks on Archie daily, fixing what he can, and he asks around for information. People here might not be working for the resistance, but they're as curious for news as people anywhere. 

He'd almost forgotten Georgina's Big Brother comment, but after a day or two it comes back to him, and it keeps doing so, recurring in his mind at odd moments. But he doesn't find any answers, just fragments of rumors and repeats of the same stories the underground press were already running when he left Boston. So the remark just stays there, in his head, hanging like a cumulus cloud in the air.

* * *

"Adrian? That you? _Shit_ , am I glad I finally got through."

The voice on the radio is familiar, but it is not Dan's, and Adrian has to make an effort to ensure that his disappointment is not audible. 

"Maria," he says, aiming for pleased amusement. "It's good of you to contact us." But he remains inwardly cautious, and he listens warily to the background noise. Weeks have passed since she vanished, and they have no way of knowing where she is or why she is contacting them now. The Party has ways of influencing people. They cannot be certain that she is still on their side.

"Yeah, yeah, okay, no need to be sarcastic." Maria's tone is warm, though, and she laughs. "I'll explain everything later. Is Judith there?"

"Yeah," Judith says, from the doorway. "Jesus, Maria, what happened? We thought the Patrols had picked you up."

"They did."

Adrian glances sideways at Judith. She's frowning. "Go on," he says.

"So they took me out of the city. Michigan, though I didn't know that at the time. I kinda lost track, couldn't tell how long the drive took. I ended up in this... internment camp, I guess you'd call it, though it seemed as though it had been set up pretty hastily. They call it a re-education facility, by which they mean you learn to parrot the Party's praises back at them if you don't want twenty-four hours in solitary."

Judith exhales, sharply. Adrian says nothing, but his mind is already summoning images of cell-blocks and interrogation rooms, black-clad guards and bright white light, and the face in them is not Maria's. He folds them away, tells himself sternly that dwelling on possible horrors will not help Dan, will not help any of them.

"Ah, I had it pretty easy, really," Maria is saying. "Guess they didn't see me as much of a threat, and a little shameless flirting with the officers didn't hurt. There were a couple who were happy to trade. Cigarettes, information, whatever. Got pretty easy to spot the ones whose hearts weren't exactly in the job."

Adrian is reminded irresistibly of his own words, prior to the Morgan incident, but he does not allow himself to flinch, or to long for Dan's solid and reassuring touch to keep the memory away. In any case, he does not have time, because Maria is still talking.

"Anyway, turns out some of the Patrolmen were more than just corrupt. A couple were infiltrators. Resistance, and a hell of a lot more militant than us. These guys are armed. They got a few of us out the day before yesterday."

"Surely that would have been a rather major incident? We've heard nothing about it."

"The Party's been keeping it as hushed up as they can, from what I've heard. You'll probably start getting reports via the underground papers in a day or two. But they've got a headquarters somewhere outside Detroit. I'm staying there for now. And-- well, it seems like these guys are gearing up for something."

"Do you have any idea what?"

"None, yet," Maria says, cheerily. There is a flurry of sound in the background, then, and muffled speech. Her voice becomes more serious, abruptly. "Shit, gotta go. Look, comms are pretty good down here, I'll keep you guys posted. But really, I wanted to warn you. I've picked up a few bits of info here."

"Such as?"

"Things were getting bad already, when I got picked up, and... well, something's wrong in the Party. I don't know what, but it sounds like Steele's seriously gunning for the resistance. And-- well, you guys are in a pretty crowded area. You have a lot of contacts. That means more informers for the Party. It won't be safe for you to stick around much longer. There's a lot of space here, and it's pretty under-the-radar. These people are getting more done than we could. You guys should consider it. It isn't far. Archie could make it, easy. Where _is_ Dan, anyway?"

The silence in the communications room is heavy and uncomfortable. Enough so to translate via radio, apparently, because after a moment Maria sighs deeply and says, "Fuck. I'm sorry. I really am."

More background noise. She sighs again, rattles off a phone number and a frequency, tells them she will be in touch soon, and terminates the transmission. 

Judith shoots Adrian a brief, concerned look before she leaves the room. She does this frequently, and her attempts to hide it are ineffective, but with each hour that passes without Dan's her eyes become sadder and more resigned. She is beginning to accept that Dan is forfeit; rendering the loss of him final and inevitable and manageable in her mind.

Adrian knows that this is only sensible. The likelihood of Dan's reappearance grows smaller every moment. But he will -- cannot -- not accept it yet. To do so would seem somehow disloyal.

And when Adrian dwells upon it too long he begins to feel as though he is sinking, to think that he will not be able to survive another minute, draw another breath, because Dan is the only thing that has made him able to live in the world, and it takes all the strength he has simply to drag himself back into the moment and go on living.

But the days pass, and the Party raids become more frequent, and the hollow-eyed fear of the populace more visible. The resistance groups that make up their network are smashed, or simply dissolve of their own accord, and their position begins to feel painfully exposed. Ants on a paving slab, awaiting the jackboot.

And reports of the breakout begin to filter through. It appears Maria was telling the truth. So when she calls back, and reiterates her offer with a higher note of urgency in her voice, Judith decides that they have no choice but to trust it. 

Adrian is not surprised. He nods, and agrees that it is the only sensible course of action. But all the same, he does not pack his things to go with them.

(Because Dan never gave up on him, even when he could have done, even when he should have done. At the very least, Adrian owes it to him to do the same. And besides, the thought of never waking up beside Dan again -- never feeling the warmth of his hands, or seeing his smile that is always genuine, or watching him frown and hunt for his glasses while wearing them, never again having the comfort of another who knows his sins -- is almost too much to bear, even for he who has caused so many horrors.)

He is surprised when Serk envelops him in a sudden, embarrassed hug before leaving, and doubly so when Judith hesitates a second and then follows suit. She actually reaches up to plant a kiss on his cheek, before promising that they will be in touch, soon, if they can, and that he will be welcome to join them if he changes his mind.

They have been comrades, after all, and Adrian has always known that he is well-liked within the group -- he has not lost his ability to charm, after all -- but the unexpected show of affection touches him nonetheless. He realizes that he will miss them.

Solitude, however, is not entirely devoid of advantages. For one thing, it means that Adrian has no-one's safety to worry about save his own. 

It simplifies things greatly.

* * *

Five more days pass, and July turns into August, before Laurie sits down in front of Dan after dinner one evening, and looks him firmly in the eyes.

"Hey." He smiles, and he means it. He's happy for her, and he hasn't forgotten that they were friends before they were ever lovers.

"Our guy should be here Wednesday," she tells him. "You'll have your parts. You can get Archie fixed, then."

Dan knows he must look relieved, because Laurie's expression darkens a fraction. And for a moment he wishes he could explain why, tell he that he's not happy to be getting away from this place, just happy to be getting back to HQ. And Adrian. 

He doesn't. Instead, he just nods and says, "That's great. Have to say, I'm getting a little worried. I tried contacting them, once the phones were back up and running, but I couldn't get through. I just hope everything's okay back there."

This time, Laurie pauses for a moment before speaking. "You _could_ stay," she says, at last. "If something has happened, it might not be safe for you to fly back. It is safe here. And you'd be welcome. More than welcome." 

"It's not that. I-- "

"You've helped out a ton of people already. You don't _have_ to go back. And it isn't like you'd be useless here. We need people with skills, too. There's always something that needs fixing." 

Dan inhales heavily and squeezes his eyes briefly shut, scratching around for an answer. But before he's had time to shape one, Laurie's eyes narrow and she looks at him shrewdly.

"There's someone new," she says. "Isn't there?"

Her gaze is keen but it is not displeased -- not yet -- and, in a way, that seems worse. Because how the hell is Dan ever going to explain this? He's never going to be able to tell her how different things are now, how different Adrian is, how he's already hurt enough for what he did. How sometimes it's impossible to reconcile the man who killed millions with the touch of a button at Karnak and the gentle human creature he shares a bed with, or how sometimes it's the most obvious thing in the world, and what really terrifies him is that that doesn't change the way he feels, not even one little bit.

" _Fuck_. I should've guessed it before now," Laurie continues. "You've been worrying your ass off since you got here. I'm right, aren't I?"

Dan sighs. "Yeah."

"Well." Laurie gives him a tiny smile. "She'd better be worth risking your neck for. That's all."

Oh, boy. This isn't going to be easy.

"Actually," he begins, "It's 'he'."


	12. Chapter 12

August 1992

Adrian works quickly and quietly, now that he is alone. Oh, he makes contacts in what is left of Boston's underworld, but for the most part they are criminals with few resistance affiliations, and he allows for only the briefest of meetings. They are simply a means to an end.

The Party keeps records of its own activities, of course, and that includes lists of political prisoners. The names of anybody caught assisting refugees out of the city, or attempting to return to it after dark, are likely to be held at the local Party headquarters. Even the local branch is a large and unwieldy organization, and there is no distraction or evasion technique in the world that would give Adrian time to make a thorough search of the place. But he means to find out where the information is held, and find out he does.

He still has funds enough to make bribery a possibility, and when it is necessary, he can be swift and ruthless and terrifying. Though the need for such tactics often leaves him tasting bile, he never falters. (And yes, he has considered other options-- but then he remembers Dan's gentle hands and his concerned, pleading eyes and knows that he could not bear to be so ungrateful.) With no life to risk but his own, he does not worry overmuch about incurring the wrath of the criminal gangs, and he is quite capable of remaining below the Party's radar. 

Adrian can go unnoticed, when he has to; he is practiced at disappearing into the shadows. He inhabits them, now. They are his home.

They always have been, if he is quite honest. For months now, he and Dan and the others have been carrying out their activities underground, living in society's cracks and corners. And even before that, Adrian's life's work -- folly though it was -- was done out of the public eye, without the knowledge of any other. In the shadows, and alone.

So it is strange that they should seem darker now, without fellow-haunters.

* * *

He meets a contact, and then another, and eventually comes to a Party official who knows the location of classified records and the passwords used to protect them, and is willing to part with the information for a price. Accepting a bribe from an enemy of the state is a risky business, and Adrian does not ask what manner of personal emergency has prompted him to do so. 

The man is thin and nervous. His eyes dart around continually, seeking a camera or a listening device, or a passer-by lingering at the window a fraction too long. He hands over the plans and information, takes the money, and leaves hurriedly, never once meeting Adrian's eyes. Adrian cannot be sure what the man is most scared of.

Back at HQ, he studies the plans with care. The most likely entrance is a side-door, little-used and unlikely to be heavily guarded. The alarm should be easy enough to disable. Getting through the interior and locating the right office room will be more difficult, but certainly not impossible.

As it happens, he encounters only two Patrolmen, and they are dispatched easily enough. They are talking in low, distracted voices, not bothering to look around or behind them, and sometimes they wander paces apart. The beams of their flashlights glance thinly into corners. It appears that the Party does not expect intruders to risk entering its own territory. 

The second Patrolman turns only as his partner's unconscious body hits the floor, and a split-second later he, too, is slumping senselessly down against a wall. 

There appears to be nobody else in earshot, although another pair will no doubt pass this way soon enough. The relative slackness of security here surprises Adrian; but then, the Party seems more concerned with attack than with defending its own property at present. More prison camps, more Patrols on the street and at the borders. That means fewer on its home turf. 

Adrian recalls Steele's lack of public appearances in the last few months; the harried note of urgency in his most recent speeches, those in which he has denounced the resistance and suggested that there are plotters who may still endanger this country's hard-won unity. The Party is beginning to seem like a cornered animal; one lashing out in fear, distracted and forgetting to defend the soft parts of its belly.

The Party's encryption software is the most sophisticated on the market. Adrian knows this because he part-funded the research team that originally designed it, and it has changed little since he used it last. A backdoor was written discreetly into the system during the development stage, before it was sold to the government. It has not been found. Getting into the files is the work of a moment, and Adrian moves methodically through the disks in the cabinet to which the plans direct him. Prisoner records for the last fortnight are on the third one he finds.

There is no mention of Dan's name.

No mention of Sam Hollis, either, or of any other alias that Adrian thinks to try. Kovacs, Walters, Juspeczyk, Archibald-- blanks, all of them.

And the night seems to contract and to grow heavy, and Adrian feels as though something indefinable is being drained out of him. Because if Dan has not been imprisoned, then--

There other disks. Other files. He rifles through them with rising urgency, the necessity of concentration the only thing keeping his hands steady.

An inventory of impounded equipment. There is nothing on it that could be Archie.

He has been here long moments now. There is little time left. He tries other drawers, other disks. Nothing.

Then something catches his eye. A manila envelope, in the in-tray beside the computer. This must be the desk of an administrative worker or a secretary; no doubt it is waiting to be passed on to a superior. But there is no name on the outside, just a string of numbers, handwritten in black ink.

The disk inside is unmarked. Adrian frowns, casts a wary glance towards the door, and pushes it into the computer. 

Unlike the others, this one is not password-protected. Not part of the Party's official records, and probably not intended to be opened here. A heading flashes up, bold and stark.

_TRANSCRIPT OF TELEPHONE CONVERSATION BETWEEN GREGORY DYSON [UDRP-USA, WASHINGTON] AND SUZANNE POPE [UDRP-USA, NEW YORK], 25 JUL 1992, 19:07._

Swiftly, Adrian scans the body of the document. Not what he was looking for, but a few phrases leap out: _Manhattan attacks, strategic locations, state of emergency, elections postponed._

Of course. Steele hasn't quite got as far as discarding the whole Constitution; not yet. The November election is still scheduled to take place. The subject has come up in conversation at HQ a number of times, and they have always assumed that it would simply be rigged. But this-- this is much bigger.

He tabs to the end. 

A risky strategy, the last line reads. _I feel I should inform you that there are those in the White House who feel Steele should be [pauses] eliminated._

This is vital. A fracture in the Party; dissent and plotting in the ranks. An opportunity, if the resistance is able to take it. And if not--

There is a sound deep within the building, then, and in the thick silence Adrian hears footsteps, far-off but quickly approaching. He is out of time.

He pockets the disk, replaces the others in the desk drawer, closes the door behind him with a gloved hand. The only evidence will be the testimony of two dazed and muddled Patrolmen. Before the guards have rounded the corner, he has already disappeared.

In the eerie quiet of curfew, Adrian makes his way back to HQ. His heart flutters like a trapped moth, somewhere between elation and despair.

* * *

Of late, Adrian has been dividing his time between HQ and the apartment he rents, hoping to avoid drawing undue notice to either location by returning too frequently during curfew. The route he takes back to HQ tonight is circuitous enough to throw off anybody who might be following, and by the time he arrives, his heartbeat has slowed and his head has cleared. It is long past midnight, and he had slept little in recent days. His limbs feel heavy with exhaustion.

Still, he scrutinizes the building and the street carefully before approaching-- and then pauses. 

Something is different. Something is not right.

There. The side entrance; the one by which he habitually leaves. It is open, swinging listlessly ajar. Adrian never fails to lock it behind him, and the key is in his pocket.

Tiredness forgotten, Adrian makes a cautious circuit of the block, sticking close to the shadows, eyes wide, listening carefully for engines or approaching footsteps. A Patrol van passes, and he melts back into the mouth of an alleyway, but that is not what worries him. The Patrols exist to enforce the curfew, to intimidate, and to arrest offenders during daylight hours. A midnight raid like this has to be the work of the secret police.

There is no unfamiliar vehicle on the street; no sound or sign of life within. All the same, Adrian enters silently, using the back door, and does not switch on the lights. He stands pressed to the wall, peering into the gloomy corridor, until his eyes have adjusted to the dense and heavy dark inside the building. Then he makes his way upstairs -- footsteps careful, breath held, as though _he_ is the intruder.

Empty. He lets out a breath; heads to the comms. room to survey the damage.

It's comprehensive. Precious little is left. All their radio equipment, all Adrian's copies of their files-- gone. Even the furniture has been turned over, and much of it is broken. All that have been left undamaged are a few unused folders and an empty chair, solitary and mocking, in the center of the room.

There is no way for anybody to get in touch, now; no way for Adrian to share the information he has found. The other resistance groups in the city will be of little use; theirs was one of the last, and those that remain are fragmented and ineffectual.

The kitchen has been similarly ransacked, the furniture turned-over and the drawers rifled through. The bunkrooms are in the same state, as is the little room he has not slept in since Dan's disappearance. Dan's clothes are strewn across the room, his small collection of books scattered and trampled upon. _Birds of Continental Europe_ has a cracked spine.

Adrian has practically lived here for months, even come to consider it a home, of a sort. But HQ is suddenly very unwelcoming. The corridors are too empty, and the silence is unrelenting and hard.

And broken, suddenly, by a small noise. Adrian freezes.

Then a shadow that is soft and grey detaches itself from the black, impenetrable shadows behind the door and pads towards him. He blinks.

The shadow blinks back, and mews expectantly.

It's a small cat, somewhere between kittenhood and full growth but already missing a chunk out of its right ear. One of the local alley strays that occasionally appears to pick through the bins out back, but right now, it rubs against Adrian's legs and looks up at him with another, insistent, meow.

He lets out a breath. "Have you been hiding here all night?" he murmurs, leaning down to scratch the cat behind its uninjured ear. "I don't have anything to feed you, I'm afraid. Sorry about that."

The cat doesn't seem to mind. It just butts against his hand, and begins to purr.

It occurs to Adrian that the situation is ridiculous. Here he is, cut off from contact with his compatriots, utterly alone, with perhaps the most important piece of political information in the country in his jacket pocket, apologizing to a cat. It's so absurd that he laughs, low and helpless in the gray end of the night.

* * *

He waits until curfew has lifted before leaving, and as a consequence spends the rest of the night perched on the edge of the bunk he can still only think of as Dan's, listening out warily for trespassers, and absently petting the cat, which has settled in a contented curl at his side. It seems unlikely that the police will return; the place probably appeared abandoned in Adrian's absence, and they left nobody to guard the entrances.

The assumption is correct. The dead hours pass without incident, and around dawn the cat shakes itself, jumps down off the mattress and stalks out, presumably off to scavenge for food. Adrian sets off for his apartment shortly after, matching his pace and demeanor to that of the commuter crowds and arriving at his building with ideas about attempting sleep. He leaves the curtains closed against the morning sunshine, and climbs into bed.

And for some reason, it is then that the awareness of loss comes upon him.

His first thought upon seeing the damage at HQ was not for Dan. In those first days after Dan's disappearance, Adrian allowed himself to hope-- to believe-- that Dan would be in touch, that his voice would crackle over the radio and inform them that he was safe, that he had simply had to hide out in France a while, or been followed and forced to change course, and that he would be back with them soon. And even after that, he had thought that there must be channels of communication from the Party's prisons, guards open to bribery or infiltrators like those who helped Maria. Dan might be able to get a message to them, somehow. 

But now-- having seen the absence of Dan's name from the official records-- it appears that Adrian's subconscious, at least, has accepted that he will not be back. 

Of course, there is a small chance that Dan is still alive. Perhaps he has been imprisoned in Europe, or crash-landed there, with no means of repairing Archie or returning himself. But it is a only a small chance, and every time Adrian closes his eyes he thinks of gunshots at borders or engines sputtering lifelessly over black seas, and a small place inside of him feels cold and desolate as the Antarctic wastes.

He pulls the blanket up over his head, and tries to force the thoughts down. What right has he to wallow in grief and self-pity? He is hardly the first person to have lost a loved one to the Party. Hundreds have already done so, and thousands more will if Steele and his supporters are allowed to carry out their plans.

That cannot happen. He cannot allow it.

The knowledge is clear and certain in Adrian's mind, and it is a familiar certainty; one that rings down the years and gives him momentary pause. Because he sounds just like-- himself. His old self.

But what other choice does he have? The means to change history is in his hands once again, though this time he has not sought it out. He cannot just let things continue as they are, or allow the Party to kill thousands in its pursuit of power. 

Perhaps he is wrong. He has been wrong before. Perhaps the transcript is a false one, fabricated by a Party official to incriminate a rival for office. Perhaps Steele's plan will not go ahead. 

But that is unlikely. And another, small voice in the back of his mind insists that he has to at least try to help, that he cannot do _nothing_. This voice doesn't sound like his old self. It sounds like someone else entirely.

He will have to leave. He has a rough idea of the location of the base at which Judith and the others are staying, and Maria's comments made it sound likely that that particular group was already considering an attack on the Party. There must be someone among the criminal elements in the city willing to provide transport for a single passenger, particularly one able to pay well. He will ask among his contacts tonight. It's all he can do.

Adrian sighs, and squeezes his eyes closed. The sleep he eventually falls into is blank and dreamless, but there is no solace in it.

He wakes in the early afternoon curled into a corner of the bed, a legacy of so many nights spent sharing a single bunk, and for brief seconds forgets where he is and expects to hear Dan complaining as he turns over, or to feel a warm body next to him. Then he blinks and remembers that there is nobody there; just an unoccupied space and the sunlight creeping through the crack in the curtains, painting a stripe of inappropriately cheerful yellow onto the coverlet.

* * *

Later that afternoon, Adrian meets with one of his contacts. After a short conference, he is informed that yes, there is a driver willing to convey him to Michigan and capable of avoiding Party checkpoints. The contact hands him a piece of paper with the telephone number of a cafe scrawled upon it, and tells him to call after hours. 

He does not return to his apartment immediately. Instead, he walks into the grocery store nearest HQ, buys rice and some rather sad-looking vegetables with the ration vouchers he has left, and then hints to shopkeeper that he is willing to pay extra for something of rather better quality.

He has never bothered with such frivolities before. When the other were at HQ, they were all scrupulous in avoiding anything that might draw undue attention. Misdemeanors were dangerous. But it hardly matters, now.

The man behind the counter looks surprised when Adrian requests a single piece of his best fish, but he wraps it and takes the money without comment. Most people, Adrian supposes, are looking for confectionary, or perhaps alcohol that's more palatable than the vile chemical brews licensed by the government. (And canned tuna would do just as well, in actuality -- but buying the best is a long-standing habit, and one he is not inclined to break. He's never quite been able to help thinking of cats as the aristocrats of the animal world, creatures for whom second-class treatment must be intolerable. Even the mangiest of strays still has something proud and delicate in its bearing, some strange dignity among the refuse in a backstreet. It's a quality he has always admired.)

Sure enough, when he slips in through the unlocked side-door of HQ, it's only a moment before a dark feline shape appears from behind the kitchen door and slinks towards him, purring ecstatically at the promise of food.

Why is he doing this? Is it to reassure himself that he still has a heart? That he will not stop caring for other creatures with Dan at his side to keep him grounded in the world?

Perhaps. But in fact, Adrian suspects that his motivations are rather simpler than that. There is something comforting in soft fur beneath his hands, in the company of a creature to whom he is nothing more than a source of food and affection.

He stopped thinking of himself as the world's savior a long time ago. In recent months, however, he has realized that perhaps he no longer wishes to be that. The thought of intervening in the larger picture -- becoming an actor upon history once more -- sends a thrill of distaste through him, accompanied by something thin and cold that might even be fear.

But there is no choice; none at all. 

He makes the call anyway.

* * *

Dan arrives under cover of darkness, his heart lightening by degrees as he flies west. He's alone, Rich having elected to stay behind in the relative safety of the Village, and feeling glad to be out of there seems kind of traitorous, but the last few days have been awkward, to say the least.

Okay, so he wasn't exactly expecting Laurie to take the news well. And she reacted pretty much as expected, at first -- wide-eyed and horrified, snapping "Have you lost your _mind_?" with an angry flush creeping up from her neck to her hairline -- but that wasn't really the worst part.

That came the following day, when she interrupted him in the midst of his repairs on Archie, sat down on the grass with him and asked gently if it was really true.

"You can tell me," she said, "If it's a cover story or something. I won't ask any more questions. And I'll keep my mouth shut. Or if he's-- " She swallowed. "Blackmailing you. Or anything. He'll never know you're here. You don't _have_ to go back."

Dan shook his head, helplessly. And the disappointed look in here eyes, then-- _that_ was the worst part.

She still probably thinks Adrian's brainwashed him, or something. But at least she was still speaking to him when he left. 

The digital display on Archie's control panel blinks. Twelve minutes until the Patrols change shifts. He'll have to wait until then to fly in through the tunnel.

He tries radioing HQ. No luck earlier, but he ought to be well within range by now.

There's no response, and Dan's heart sinks a little as he remembers being unable to get through on the Village telephones, either.

No. He's not going to start assuming the worst-- not yet. They have had to change their phone lines before now, and maybe the radio frequencies have been shut down. Or maybe they're just having technical difficulties. Those happen a lot.

He parks Archie halfway up the tunnel, though, and continues up to HQ on foot, just in case. And as soon as he steps into the workshop, he notices the quiet. 

It's never this quiet. Even in the small hours of the morning, there's always the hiss of a radio or a murmured conversation or somebody up and about in the corridors, getting ready for radio duty or unable to sleep and drinking coffee in the kitchen. It's unnatural. Dan breathes in deep and holds it; ascends the stairs as quietly as he can.

There's nobody here. And the door to the comms. room is hanging open and he can see that the handle is busted, and he doesn't even have to look in there to know that it's too late, he's _too late_ \--

He exhales heavily, tries to swallow back the cold sickness that's rising in his throat. Because if HQ's been raided, what's happened to the others? Arrested? Imprisoned? But the secret police are armed and they don't answer publicly to anyone, they can kill people and they just disappear and nobody ever knows, he'd never know--

Dan takes another breath, shaky but deliberately slow. He isn't panicking. Not yet. They might have gotten out in time. And if they've been taken there will be signs of a struggle, and if not perhaps someone will have left him some message, some clue. They wouldn't just leave and let him wonder, Adrian wouldn't do that.

He looks into the comms. room. Nothing; it's gutted. The kitchen, then. He pushes open the door.

And then goes still, startled by the utterly incongruous noise he hears. A kind of chirrup-purr, the same noise his mom's fat tabby used to make when he got home from school and she was expecting to be fed. There's a cat under the table. A scruffy-looking grey one, with half an ear.

Dan blinks, incredulous. The cat just looks at him. Then it stalks out from under the table and through the door, tail raised imperiously. 

And God, there are footsteps in the corridor, and Dan follows it with more curiosity than hope, pressed in close to the wall and poised to jump back or strike out with a fist if he has to.

But when he rounds the corner and sees Adrian looking back at him, all he can manage to feel is relief. Like he knew all along-- like he's _always_ known-- that the world just couldn't be that cruel.


	13. Chapter 13

August 1992

" _Dan_. You're safe."

Dan feels his expression break into a grin. Adrian is just barely more restrained, relaxing catlike out of his defensive posture, relief evident in every line of his body, the realest, simplest smile Dan has ever seen from him on his face. He exhales deeply, steps forward into the deserted, darkened kitchen. "I thought-- "

"Yeah," Dan says, gesturing helplessly around him. "Me too." 

He moves forward, too, closes the gap between them. And then, for a long moment, there's nothing more to say, because they're holding on to each other desperately, actually _touching_ for the first time in weeks, Adrian's fingers digging into the hollows of his shoulder blades like he's trying to anchor Dan to him, like he can't quite believe that Dan's really there, that he won't vanish into the darkness if he lets go. 

Dan doesn't object. He gets it. He breathes out shakily, gives himself a moment just to take this in.

"What happened?" he asks, when he can bear to think about other things again, the words muffled against Adrian's shoulder. "Here, I mean. Where is everybody?"

"The Party. Thankfully, there was nobody here at the time." Adrian's arms loosen around him fractionally, but that's all. "The others are in Michigan. With Maria."

"Maria? She's okay?"

"We've been very lucky, it seems." Adrian pulls back a little, then, looking him full in the face, but he still doesn't break contact. He keeps his hands on Dan's shoulders, resting there lightly, perhaps not yet ready to trust that Dan won't dissolve into thin air the second he moves. "And-- you? What kept you away so long?"

"Oh. Christ. Archie got damaged. The guys in England needed a ride to their hideout, and I could hardly say no. Had kind of a bad landing. And-- Adrian, Laurie was there. She's _alive_." Dan hear his voice brighten on the words, aware that he's grinning as they come out. And Adrian's smile doesn't falter, but it becomes minutely stiffer and more fixed, and something in his expression snaps shut.

"That's wonderful," he says, smoothly. "You must be very happy." He removes his hands from Dan's shoulders.

It takes Dan a couple of seconds to register the action. He blinks.

Shit. _Shit_. With all his relief at being back home and nobody being dead, he's forgotten to stop and think for a minute before opening his mouth. 

As far as Adrian knows, the only reason Dan and Laurie ever broke up was the Party taking over. And maybe that was most of it, at the time, but in the intervening months, things have changed so much that Dan knows there's no chance they'll ever get back together. He doesn't regret it, either, wouldn't change it for anything. But Adrian doesn't know all that, and it would be just typical of him to assume that Dan won't want _him_ anymore, and to act like he doesn't even have the right to say anything about it. 

" _No_ ," Dan says, hurriedly. "No." He has to fix this, now. It feels like he's scrabbling at the edges of something with only his own hands as tools, clumsy with desperation to save what's underneath. "It isn't like that."

Adrian raises an eyebrow, the movement just barely visible in the dim room. The shadows seem to pool in the sockets of his eyes and the hollows beneath his cheekbones, liquid and soft, like a caress -- or like they're waiting to swallow him up. But he is still looking back at Dan, he doesn't break eye-contact, and something in Dan leaps and clings on to that fact like a lifeline.

"I didn't even know she was there," he goes on, gathering speed as he talks, thankful that it covers up the tremble in his voice. "I hadn't heard from her in months, and _of course_ I'm glad she's alright. We were together for seven years. You don't just forget about someone after that. But Laurie and I are over. Have been for a long time." He pauses, lets his voice soften. "You don't really think I'd do that to you?"

At that, Adrian does lower his eyes. But the smile that has solidified on his face softens, and he blinks a few times. If anything he looks kind of-- shamefaced? Jesus.

"I'm sorry, Dan," he murmurs. "That was wrong of me. Perhaps-- perhaps I had already started to think I'd lost you." He breaks off, gives a little, self-deprecating laugh. The sound is desperately fragile. "I don't quite dare believe you're here."

Dan wants to grab him and hug him crushingly tight and never let go. Instead, he reaches out cautiously, touches Adrian's arm, a soft brush of fingertips against fabric, then tugs him in close, slow and gentle. A second's hesitation, and Adrian's arms settle back around Dan's waist, his cheek against Dan's temple. Then Dan can let himself breathe again.

"I _would_ understand, you know," Adrian adds, after a moment. "I'm hardly the easiest of people to be around. You're under no obligation." 

The words are so soft they're barely-there, and Dan feels them against the side of his face more than he hears them. There's a worried twinge in his gut, only it doesn't last, because Adrian isn't quite managing to sound like he means what he's saying. A month or two ago, there would have been a tremor there, a shade of uncertainty, something to suggest that he really did think Dan might just up and leave him. There's none of that there now, though, and the awful, frozen politeness of the last few moments has dissolved. All that Dan can hear is relief.

Sighing, he turns his head a fraction, places a kiss on Adrian's cheek. "I didn't sign up for easy," he tells him. "It's not as if you lured me in under false pretences. And anyway, that's not true."

"I'm not sure I follow."

" _Not_ being around you, that was the hard part. This-- this is just. I dunno. Right." And then Dan swallows and forces a smile, because he feels too close to saying something that he doesn't want to come out in the midst of all this loss and debris, something that ought to be better than that. "Anyway," he says, to change the subject. "Laurie's new guy didn't seem too worried that she was gonna come running back to me. So you definitely shouldn't."

Adrian raises an eyebrow. "The subject came up, then?"

"Yeah." Dan grimaces. "She figured it out."

"Ah. And?"

"Well, I doubt we're gonna be on her Christmas card list anytime soon, let's put it that way. But-- well. We parted on speaking terms. That's more than I was I expecting, I guess." 

She'll never understand, though, and why should she? Even if they get back in touch, eventually, she'll never speak to him without that worried look in her eyes, that edge of concern that says she can't be sure he hasn't gone nuts, isn't hypnotized or brainwashed or incapable of being trusted to make his own decisions. For all that Dan's made his choice -- and he _has_ , and despite everything, he doesn't feel a flicker of doubt -- that still stings.

There's no reply from Adrian, but his arms tighten around Dan's waist. And that tells Dan that he understands enough to know that there's nothing he can say. But he's there, and he's not pulling back or running away, and right now that's enough.

Something brushes Dan's leg, then, and he glances down, startled, pulled back into the moment. He'd almost forgotten about the cat.

The cat looks up at him, and meows impatiently. With an apologetic glance, Adrian lets go, and crouches down to scoop the cat up in his arms. "I suppose we should be leaving," he says. "It wouldn't be safe to remain here too long."

"Oh, yeah. Sure. Do you still have your apartment? Is there somewhere safe we can go?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. The others are at the base of a resistance group just outside Detroit. I had arranged transport, but we'll be able to get there much more quickly by air. We can bypass checkpoints that way, too."

"Yeah. Wait-- you'd arranged to go already? I'd heard things were getting more dangerous, but--"

"I had no other option. I ran across some information that could be vital in opposing the Party. I have to share it." Adrian blinks, looks down, scratches the cat under its chin. "I wouldn't leave without you. Not if I had any choice."

Dan reaches out gingerly, gives the cat a tentative tickle. It closes its eyes, gives an appreciative chirp. His fingers brush against Adrian's, just lightly. He understands, and it isn't disappointment or anger that's at the forefront of his mind, just a pang of worry come too late. He hadn't realized things had gotten quite that bad. 

But there's no point bringing that up now, so he just says, "I know. It's okay," and smiles to show that he means it. He does.

* * *

The hours that follow are a ceaseless stream of activity, the kind that demands tunnel-vision. Adrian hurries back to his apartment to pick up the necessaries, while Dan manhandles (cathandles?) a complaining feline into Archie's cabin. _That_ 's not going to make their journey any easier, but it's one point he knows better than to argue, even if he wanted to. 

It's luck as much as anything that gets them past the Patrols and to their destination without becoming hopelessly lost, and by the time they get there Dan's flying half-asleep. Half-asleep, but alive, too, with something warm and bright and hopeful that he hasn't felt in years, maybe decades. Because Adrian's explained everything on the way -- about breaking into the Party's offices (trying to find out what had happened to _Dan_ , and that uncorks a whole other mess of emotions, out of which Dan can't decide which is stronger, 'pleased' or 'furious') and about the plot against Steele and the organized resistance that the others have joined up with -- and maybe, finally, they're going to make a difference, maybe they actually have a _chance_.

No more Big Brother. He gets it now.

* * *

The base in Michigan consists of an abandoned building that might once have been a warehouse or storage facility, and a few battered-looking portables clustered around it like nobody ever remembered to pull them down. Most of what they have here is improvised -- generators, an illicit tap into the local water supply, beds and industrial cookers filched from an abandoned dorm at Wayne. Despite his tiredness, Dan thinks he'll never cease to be amazed at what people can manage to do, with so little, when they have to. It reminds him of the Village, kind of, except that they're greeted with wary looks and terse questions until Maria comes barrelling out of the door of the main building and practically steamrollers him in her rush to give him a hug. 

And there's weaponry around the place. More talk of strategy; less unguarded gossip. The expressions on people's faces are a shade grimmer.

But they still get hugged by Maria, and Serk, and even Judith -- then bombarded with questions and information, hugged some more, and eventually, thankfully, fed and pointed in the direction of a shower and a bedroom. The presence of the cat even elicits a few smiles from the people they don't know. Serk christens him Shadow, which seems to suit -- even if he doesn't look too worried about slinking around undetected now that he's acquired a gaggle of attentive admirers, just curls up on the nearest available lap, purring noisily.

* * *

By the time he's alone with Adrian again, Dan thinks he'd be quite happy to crawl into bed in the little room they've been given and just pass out, clothes, shoes and all. Adrian raises his eyebrows at that suggestion, but Dan can't even muster the energy to roll his eyes, just kicks his shirt and pants into a corner and climbs thankfully underneath the covers. Which would normally be occasion enough for another reproving look, but right now Adrian just scoots up to make room in the bunk -- which is, after all, just as narrow and cramped as the old one, back at HQ-- and arranges himself carefully around Dan. They lie still, curled together, not speaking, for a long few moments. It could be awkward, but it isn't. After everything, the quiet is a blessing.

"This," Dan says, eventually. "All of this. It's-- wow. Yeah. It's..." There are dozens of possibilities circulating in his head, dozens of thoughts begging to be articulated, but the soft rise and fall of everyday sounds out in the corridor and the simple, touchable fact of not-being-alone settle over him like a blanket, and the end of whatever he was trying to say sinks under their warm weight.

"It certainly is," Adrian agrees, the low note of amusement in his voice swallowed by a yawn. 

Dan closes his eyes. "Glad we understand each other." 

He feels Adrian smile against his shoulder, and it's the last thing he feels for several hours.

Quite a lot of hours, judging by the silence outside the room when he wakes, and the absence of light between the slats of the window blind. They've slept right through until night. The whole place is asleep, inside, at least, though there are bound to be a few people up and keeping watch outside. 

When he shifts and stretches, Adrian sighs and whispers, "Dan," into his hair -- a soft, prayerful exhalation, a wondering hand on his hip. Wondering-- but not hesitant, like on the last night they spent together, not afraid anymore, and Dan feels relief uncurl in him, warm and bright. He presses a kiss to Adrian's shoulder, leans into the touch. Adrian's mouth is soft, his hands gently insistent, whispering need against Dan's skin -- like he's trying to memorize every part of Dan, in case they get torn away from each other again tomorrow. 

Dan lets him. He knows the feeling. And God, it could so easily happen, the possibility is too real to bear thinking about, so he closes his eyes against the darkness, focuses on the sound of Adrian's breathing like it's the only thing in the world, and does his best not to think at all.

 

September 1992

Halfway through the month, the _Runagate_ \-- the biggest of the underground newspapers -- gets wind of the fact that Steele plans to prevent the November election going ahead. 

The secret police carry out immediate raids on the few remaining resistance groups known to them, but the source remains stubbornly anonymous. Nobody knows where the story came from, or if anyone does, they aren't telling. 

And the word is out, now, it is in the world and in the air and the expressions of the people on the street, spreading fast and sharp and bright like burning. In San Francisco, seventeen people stage a protest outside one of the designated polling stations. A rash gesture, and all of them are arrested right away, but it's the first time anyone has dared express discontent with the Party so publicly in over a year.

On the outskirts of Detroit, the resistance headquarters receives a communication. It's unsigned, but claims to be from a number of senior figures in the Steele administration. They have become disillusioned with the Party's policies, it claims. They can't endorse Steele's attempts to cling unjustly to power. Under the right circumstances, and given assurances of immunity from later prosecution in the event of a successful overthrow, they would be willing to... alter their allegiances. A fair proportion of the Party rank and file would probably follow, and there have been mutterings of discontent in the Patrols. Information, resources, manpower -- it's a tempting offer, if it's for real.

The letter invites the resistants to send a few representatives to a meeting, at a deserted office-block on the opposite edge of town. 

Astonishingly, they make it back. It isn't a trap.

And suddenly, it's settled. A week, two at most, and they'll be making their move. An assortment of resistance groups, scattered around the country, half of them untrained and unprepared, most of them shit-scared, attempting to bring down the United States Government. 

It's a terrifying thought, even though it isn't as terrifying as the alternative -- they do nothing, and the Party stays, and _this_ goes on indefinitely. 

Right now, though, Dan's doing his best not to think about it, because what would be the point of scaring himself stupid? It isn't as if that would improve their chances any. And besides, after the long weeks of stagnant inactivity following Maria's arrest, and then more of the same at the Village, it feels good just to be doing something again.

He has his head stuck halfway under Archie's control panel, pulling out some of the older wiring there. The guys here have a fairly plentiful supply of spare parts, and he's taking full advantage. If he's gonna have to provide air support in any of the inevitable skirmishes ahead, he want to be sure that everything's in full working order, thanks very much.

But his neck is starting to ache pretty badly, so he's grateful for the interruption when there's a light tap at the open door, and Adrian ducks in through it a second later. 

"Hey." Dan grins and sits up, then winces as the muscles in his back inform him that whatever he thinks he's doing to them, they'd really prefer it if he stopped now. 

Adrian arranges himself carefully against Archie's side, fingers fluttering briefly against the panelling before coming to rest, hands clasped in front of him. His expression is gentle, neutral. "How are your improvements coming along?" 

He listens, head inclined to one side, as Dan goes over the ins and outs of Archie's control mechanisms. Smiling, but there's clearly something on his mind. Dan sees a question humming behind the smile, present in the determined stillness of Adrian's posture and the flickering brightness in his eyes that no-one else on Earth would know for nervousness, waiting to break out.

Dan doesn't ask, though, just returns the smile, and waits. It's taken long enough to get Adrian to open up to him of his own accord -- which he usually does, eventually -- and he isn't about to jeopardize that by pushing the matter.

"I've been... speaking to Ronald," Adrian says, after a few moments have passed quietly. Ronald's one of the clear leaders here, a placid, mild-eyed guy in his late fifties with a graying beard and a slow, reasonable, utterly unshakeable manner of speaking. He stepped down from his seat in Congress right after the formation of the Party. 

"Yeah?" Dan keeps his tone light and gentle, and glances up encouragingly. Adrian dips his gaze, looks uncertainly down at the floor. Dan lets him, doesn't worry at the statement, just waits patiently for the rest of it to unravel.

"He's been in talks with a number of other resistance leaders around the country, with regards to what's to be done in the event that we're successful. Of course, elections will need to be held as soon as possible, but someone has to oversee the process, make sure that it happens fairly. That the Party doesn't interfere."

"Makes sense."

"Mmm. Given the circumstances, it appears reasonable that there should be some extra safeguards put in place for the time being. The consensus seems to be that the various resistance groups should form some sort of... committee. At a federal level, at first, since the Party's wrested so much power away from individual states. A temporary measure only, in all likelihood, but it's still a huge undertaking."

"Let me guess. He wants you to be on it?"

Adrian nods, mutely, without looking up. He's obviously conflicted, and Dan feels a twinge of worry that makes him get to his feet, cross over to where Adrian's standing, and take his hand. He runs his thumb softly over the back of it, doesn't try to make Adrian meet his eyes.

"Among others, yes," Adrian continues, after a moment. "All representatives will have to be approved by a vote, of course. Ronald hopes to make an announcement to the group tomorrow. I'll need to decide by then whether or not I wish to be involved. I-- " He falls silent again. 

"You want to do it," Dan says.

Adrian does look up, then, blinking at him in surprise.

"Six months ago you would have said no without a second thought. You know that as well as I do." Dan squeezes Adrian's hand. "And now you have the chance to help make a difference, and you're actually thinking about it instead of beating yourself up. Adrian. That's _good_."

"You think I should accept?"

"I think it's your decision to make. But I _do_ know that this sort of thing is exactly what you're good at. Organizing people, inspiring them, getting them to work for something -- it's what you do best. You just have to start trusting yourself."

A faint little smile. "Perhaps. That's easier to do when I have you." Adrian half-closes his eyes, leans forward, presses a kiss to Dan's temple. "I'll think about it."

There is an unspoken plea there -- _please keep me human; please don't let me go back to being what I was_ \-- but Dan is pretty sure it's needless. The Adrian he knows now isn't the same guy who thought he had all the answers, who thought he had the right to do what he did because nobody in the world could possibly know better. All the same, he pulls Adrian into a full hug, then groans quietly as his cramped muscles protest at being forced to move.

Adrian looks at him narrowly. " _You_ need a rest," he decides, uncertainty vanishing.

Dan nods against his shoulder. The storm is about to break, and he'll take whatever calm he can find. It might be the last they get for a long time.


	14. Chapter 14

March 1993

"Polls close at midnight, and we'll be broadcasting the results as they come in. With a number of independents standing alongside the main parties that have emerged in the wake of the Steele government's breakdown, opinions are likely to run high, whatever the results. But the process itself seems to have run remarkable smoothly -- thanks in no small part to the sterling efforts of the electoral committee, set up to help prevent any unfair practices. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Veidt?"

These are the kinds of questions Adrian is used to -- the kind he has always been able to answer without effort -- and he smiles as the camera swivels towards him. The interviewer turns in her seat, neat and trim in her tailored skirt suit, sleek, dark hair gleaming beneath the studio lights. Less than three months ago, she was a wanted woman. The studio itself is still at a halfway stage, somewhere between make-do and professionalism. They've found a few plush armchairs and a polished backdrop to sit in front of the cameras, but the building is only half-serviceable, the equipment mostly borrowed and mended, and the lights require constant maintenance in case they flicker and fail.

Adrian inclines his head, acknowledges the question gratefully. "I'm afraid it would be most unfair of us to take all the credit," he replies, gently. "The efforts of thousands of people throughout the country have contributed to making things happen so quickly. If anything, the fact we've been able to help make this happen without interference from Steele's remaining supporters is testament to the human determination to see things put right. The committee is a very small body, and may not even exist for much longer. This is far bigger than just us."

The interviewer nods, still smiling, and changes tack. "Of course, some of the people who helped out with the process had previously been members of the Steele government, or at least the Party. The claimed to be disillusioned, but were you happy about accepting their help? I mean-- did you never suspect they might try to undermine the whole process?"

A fair question, and Adrian doesn't allow himself to frown. He nods understandingly, instead. "Of course, we have had to use the utmost caution. But I don't think everybody who was taken in by Steele believed wholeheartedly in his repressive methods. Fear often leads people to do things they later regret, and they deserve the chance to make amends."

"Amends? Do you think that's even possible?"

"I'm not sure that I'm in a position to judge." He spreads his hands. "However. The majority of people who worked for Steele's government didn't commit acts of violence or intimidation, or arrest innocent people, or lock them in internment camps. But they stood by and allowed those things to happen. If they wish to make some attempt to alleviate the harm the Party caused -- well, I can't help feeling that they should be allowed to do so."

The interviewer still doesn't look entirely convinced, but her expression is less sharp-edged than it was a few moments ago, and she's nodding minutely. 

Adrian leans forward fractionally, palms upwards, eyes earnest. "Former Party members have provided real help in some areas. Some of the people I met in the resistance movement have been heavily involved with efforts to reunite political prisoners with their families. I know they've gained some invaluable information from people who were involved with the Steele administration. For my own part, I can only say that I don't think redemption is ever impossible. At least, I hope not."

Apparently satisfied, the interviewer moves on. Adrian smiles, the same way he always has done on camera, good-humored and self-deprecating, and no-one in the world would ever know that this time it's real. 

Well. _Almost_ no-one.

* * *

Dan wakes briefly in the still-dark before morning, when Adrian climbs out of bed, and properly half an hour later, with the thin line of night between the curtains fading to gray pre-dawn and the smell of coffee from the kitchen becoming impossible to ignore. He stretches, then winces at the protest from his cramped muscles. Sleeping tangled up together has become habit, after all the months squeezed into spare bunks and tiny guest-rooms, and sometimes even hastily-cleared patches of floor, but it's one Dan doesn't mind holding on to, despite the occasional discomfort.

There are other habits that have been easier to break. Like keeping bags packed beside the front door ready for flight at an hour's notice, and glancing warily at any stranger who follows them down the street a block too far for comfort.

Dan crawls out from under the bedclothes and into pants and a t-shirt, and pads out into the kitchen. They've been here just under two months now. The apartment is modest, compared to the kinds of places Adrian used to live in, and even to Dan's old townhouse, but it's safe and peaceful, and it's _theirs_. Dan figures they probably won't stay there forever -- he'd be happier if he could keep Archie at home, instead of in a lock-up on the other side of town, for one thing -- but right now, he's never been quite so grateful for anywhere in his life.

The kitchen's empty, but there's a mug of coffee waiting for him on the counter, still just-about warm enough to be drinkable. That's okay. He knows where he'll find Adrian. Dan squints around for his glasses (which, for some obscure reason, he eventually finds on top of the refrigerator) and something to put on his feet, and lets himself out though their front door, clutching his mug in one hand.

The top floor of their building is ostensibly a storage space, but nobody ever goes up there, and there's an attic window that opens out onto the roof. It's easy enough to climb up there for anyone with a modicum of agility, and there's a ledge that's perfect for sitting on. Dan discovered that a couple of weeks after they moved in, and when they realized the place was disused, they appropriated one of the dusty old stepladders lying around up there as a makeshift staircase. The view is a mess of streets and traffic and people and lights, but from that height it's oddly peaceful. Back when he was patrolling, Dan used to find waiting around on rooftops kind of soothing. Now, he likes to sit up there when he's stressed out or tired, or just wants to go somewhere quiet for a while. He often finds Adrian up there, too; first thing in the morning, like this, or in the middle of the night when he hasn't been able to sleep.

Because that still happens, of course. There are still bad nights. The process of rebuilding a society is painstaking and frustrating -- doubly so when you're part of a coalition, not the one guy in charge, though he knows that Adrian wouldn't have it any other way, now -- and digging through what remains of the Party's files sometimes throws up things they'd both prefer not to have seen. So there are still times when Adrian is quiet for too long, fades out of the moment and goes to some miserable, walled-in little place that doesn't allow room for affection or comfort, and Dan has to sit him down and talk him out of it. And sometimes words won't do it, and all Dan can do is hold him fiercely close, or make love to him until the shadows are gone from his eyes.

But they're making progress. Adrian's at least given up on reminding Dan that he doesn't have to be here or do this, like it's some kind of obligation. Perhaps he's just being gracious, or perhaps he's finally accepted that Dan's with him because he wants to be, because, against all probability, Adrian makes him happy.

Dan isn't sure that it's the latter. But he can hope.

And he is happy, happier that he could ever have imagined himself being again, in the not-so-distant past. Things certainly aren't perfect -- a lot of the time they aren't even _good_ \-- but they're getting better. And he and Adrian are helping, and now they can do it without having to hide underground or look over their shoulders all the time. They have time to just be normal, do things like curl up on the couch together to watch the news, or sit up late drinking wine instead of cheap instant coffee, or sleep in on Sunday mornings without having to worry about who's on radio duty and whether there's anybody watching the back door.

Not that that last one happens more than once in a blue moon. Adrian's up before dawn most days, regardless. Right now, he's sitting on the window-ledge just like Dan expects, very straight but very still; his version of relaxed. He doesn't turn immediately at the sound of Dan's footsteps, but Shadow jumps down off his lap, finding his way to the floor via the top of an abandoned wardrobe and something that might once have been half a pool table. His paws leave delicate prints in the dust, and Dan wishes he'd thought to put something sturdier than carpet slippers on his feet. It's filthy up here, and the open window is letting in a stiff breeze.

He places his coffee on the top step of the ladder, and hauls himself up after it. Adrian glances round with a small, opaque smile -- the first sign he's given of being aware that Dan's here -- and moves his own, half-empty, mug to make room on the ledge. Then he turns back, wordlessly, to look out over the city.

Dan follows his gaze. The sky is smeared with orange, sunrise just starting to pick parts of the city out of darkness, turning the tops of the taller buildings pink. Including that of the Veidt building, which is clearly visible from their vantage point, recognizable even without the enormous logo and arcing purple lights -- and Dan realizes that that's what Adrian's been looking at.

It was officially returned to Adrian's ownership a month ago, but most of the floors are still being lent out as workspace to departments of the new local government that have outgrown their temporary offices, as well as a couple of the various volunteer groups that have sprung up to help undo the Party's work. The top floor, though, is still unoccupied. The Party had stripped out pretty much everything of monetary value, but obviously hadn't gotten round to converting it for their own purposes before everything fell apart.

"We could go back," Dan says, and regrets it as soon as the words are out of his mouth, even though when he thinks about it rationally he knows that just leaving it empty like that is a waste. "You could go back, I mean. And I could come with you. If you want."

Adrian blinks once, slowly, and looks at him with real curiosity.

"I mean, it is yours." Dan shrugs. "And you must miss it. After all, this isn't exactly..." He trails off, and just gestures vaguely down into the dusty attic instead. 

Something in his expression must betray his unease with the idea, though, because Adrian reaches over to brush Dan's fingertips with his own, and waits for Dan to take his hand before speaking.

"Actually," he says, meditatively, "I was thinking of offering to have the top floor converted. The work Judith and Serkan are doing, reuniting people with their families-- well, it's very important, and there are more people coming forward each week. They have no shortage of volunteers. I think they could use the extra space. And besides-- " He runs his thumb across Dan's palm, and smiles. Properly, this time. "I think I prefer it here."

Dan raises his eyebrows, but the only reply he gets is a quirk of Adrian's lips, as though there's no further explanation needed. He frowns, searches Adrian's expression carefully (another habit he doesn't foresee letting go of anytime soon) but he can see no doubt or shadow there.

And sometimes it's better not to press things. Dan knows that, so he leaves it. And besides, he'd be lying if he pretended he wasn't relieved. Adrian's apartments always seemed kind of cold and impersonal to him, like a meticulous mock-up of the kind of place a successful businessman ought to live, and while all the Egyptian stuff was interesting, it wasn't what he'd call homely. And yeah, he knows the old Veidt building was destroyed in '85, that this one was finished a couple of years later and it isn't where Adrian did all his scheming, but the thought of living where Adrian did while everything was falling apart -- and before that, before he'd even realized his carefully-planned disasters weren't the answer -- makes Dan feel something twisting and unpleasant in his throat.

Adrian squeezes his hand, and takes a delicate sip of his cold coffee without betraying any distaste. But his fingers tremble fractionally over Dan's, and Dan's heart skips worriedly for a second. Then he remembers that it's fucking freezing. He's already starting to feel the chill through his dressing gown, and all Adrian's wearing is a light shirt. It's Sunday. They don't have to _go_ anywhere, and frankly, sitting up in the cold like this is starting to feel ridiculous.

He raises his free hand, and brushes Adrian's cheek with his thumb. "Come back to bed?" he suggests. "It's early."

For a second, Adrian just leans, feline, into the touch, eyes slipping half-closed. "Why not?" he murmurs.

Dan smiles. There are a few pedestrians around even at this hour -- either very early, or very late going to bed -- but it's quiet, and the sun has not quite risen yet. They have plenty of time. The dawn is still breaking.


End file.
